Cargo Operations: Georgia, Philadelphia

Four brand new ship-to-shore Neo-Panamax cranes carried aboard the heavy lift ship M/V Swan sailed into the Savannah River Wednesday, November 22, headed for the Georgia Ports Authority’s Garden City Terminal. Their delivery comes at a time of double-digit growth for the Savannah facility, where throughput in October hit a monthly high of more than 400,000 TEUs.

Once commissioned, the new cranes will bring Savannah's fleet to 30. Six additional cranes will arrive in 2020. When all are commissioned, the upgrade will enable the Garden City facility to handle nearly 1,300 containers per hour.

The Neo-Panamax cranes are tall enough to lift containers 152 feet/46 meters above the dock. The booms extend 192 feet/58.5 meters from the dock face. Lift capacity for each crane is 72 tons. With the booms up, the cranes stand 412 feet/125.6 meters tall. The crane fleet operates along nine berths, over nearly 10,000/3,048 meters contiguous feet of dock face.

Upon arrival, technicians must lift and secure the boom for each crane, and complete electrical attachments, mechanical alignments and testing before the cranes are put into use. The first of the new cranes will go into service in February. Two more will be commissioned in March and the fourth in April.

According to Ed McCarthy, the ports authority’s chief operating officer, the capabilities of these new cranes will be multiplied by other ongoing infrastructure improvements, including the Mason Mega Rail Terminal. That project will double the Savannah's annual rail lift capacity to 1 million container lifts, and expand the port's reach into the Midwest.

"These new cranes will prepare us for the next wave of growth for Georgia and the nation," Mr. McCarthy said. "Today's 15 percent increase in our crane fleet will help GPA stay ahead of the growth curve. Nearly two-thirds of the ships serving the Port of Savannah are Neo-Panamax vessels, and we expect the shipping lines to continue their shift toward larger vessels."

The M/V Swan sailing up the Savannah River with four new ship-to-shore cranes for delivery to Georgia Ports Authority’s Garden City Terminal.

Photo/Georgia Ports Authority, Stephen B. Morton

PhilaPort Purchases Two New Super Post-Panamax Container Cranes

PhilaPort has concluded an agreement for the purchase of two super post-Panamax container gantry cranes from a Chinese manufacturer for $23.5 million. The deal brings to four the number of new cranes ordered for Packer Avenue Marine Terminal within the past year.

The first pair of cranes will arrive in March 2018 and the second in April 2019.

"The second set of cranes will mirror the two cranes arriving in the first quarter of 2018," said PhilaPort CEO Jeff Theobald. "These new cranes will be the largest and most modern, capable of unloading containers from the largest container ships in the world."

Last year, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf’s $300 million port development plan established a public-private agreement for capital improvements at the Packer Avenue terminal. Under the plan, the terminal operator, Greenwich Terminals, a Holt subsidiary, agreed to purchase one gantry crane and PhilaPort would buy three gantry cranes.

"We are busier than ever before, and we will certainly be well over 500,000 TEUs," said Tom Holt, Jr., president of Astro Holdings, Inc., which operates PAMT for PhilaPort. "The new cranes can’t arrive soon enough because they will help us reach our goal of handling one million TEUs per year."