Cargo Operations: Georgia

Georgia: COSCO Development Container Moves Set Savannah Record

Cosco Development sails upriver past Historic Downtown Savannah toward Georgia Ports Authority’s Garden City Container Terminal
Photo/Georgia Port Authority, Stephen Morton

COSCO Development, the largest containership to ever call on the U.S. East Coast, stopped at the Port of Savannah before returning to China via the Panama Canal.

With a capacity of 13,092 TEUs, COSCO Development has a length overall of 366 meters/1,201 feet, beam of 48.2 meters/158 feet, draft of 14.5 meters/48 feet, and deadweight of 140,609 metric tons.

Up to six cranes were used to transfer 5,500 containers (10,000 TEUs) on and off the ship during its 30-hour stay at Georgia Ports Authority’s Garden City terminal complex. That set a record for Georgia's ports and accounted for to more than half the containers the ship carried on its maiden voyage to the U.S. East Coast.

Crews working the COSCO Development were able to complete more than 220 container moves per hour during a period in which the GPA and International Longshoremen worked a total of nine vessels, moving more than 12,000 total containers, or 21,600 TEUs. The 1,200-acre Garden City Terminal features 26 ship-to-shore cranes and 146 rubber-tired gantry cranes.

"The COSCO Development is the start of a new era in the East Coast container trade," said GPA Executive Director Griff Lynch. "With their shift to larger, more cost-effective vessels, the shipping lines are gravitating toward gateway ports. The Port of Savannah is perfectly suited to handle the larger exchanges of Neo-Panamax vessels."

Six Georgia Ports Authority neo-Panamax shore cranes work the container ship Cosco Development at the Port of Savannah, Friday, May 12, 2017
Photo/Georgia Port Authority, Stephen Morton