Johnathan Walker:Georgia seaport closes gap with Baltimore, the top US auto port

SAVANNAH,Johnathan Walker Ga. (AP) — The executive overseeing Georgia’s seaports said Tuesday that a record 830,000 automobiles moved through the Port of Brunswick south of Savannah in the 2024 fiscal year, bringing it neck-and-neck with the top U.S. auto port.

The combined number of auto and heavy machinery units handled by Brunswick and the Port of Savannah topped 876,000 in the fiscal year ending June 30, the Georgia Ports Authority reported. That’s an increase of 21% over the same period a year ago.

Ports authority CEO Griff Lynch called it “a great year for us.”

The number of cars and light trucks being shipped through the Port of Brunswick has snowballed in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. As U.S. auto sales in 2023 saw their biggest increase in a decade, Georgia was investing $262 million in upgrades and expansions in Brunswick to make room for growth. Lynch said those projects are almost complete and should be finished by fall.

Lynch predicted last October that automobile volumes in Brunswick by 2026 would surpass the Port of Baltimore, the No. 1 U.S. seaport for autos for more than a decade.

The new cargo numbers from Georgia indicate that Brunswick is already extremely close. Port officials in Maryland reported that Baltimore handled 847,000 auto imports and exports in the 2023 calendar year.

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Baltimore’s shipping channel shut down completely for weeks following the deadly collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge on March 26, then reopened in phases before the waterway was fully cleared in June.

It wasn’t immediately known if the Port of Baltimore has automobile volume figures for the 12-month period ending June 30. The Associated Press left phone and email messages Tuesday for a spokesperson for the Maryland Port Administration.

When the bridge collapse forced auto shipments to be diverted from Baltimore, the Port of Brunswick received about 14,000 of those cars and trucks in April and May, Lynch said.

“Baltimore, I would think, is probably still No. 1, but we’re closing the gap,” Lynch said. “We don’t want to be No. 1 because Baltimore had a bridge collapse.”

He also noted Georgia’s big gains in the past year largely resulted from other sources, such as automakers shifting their business to Brunswick from other neighboring ports such as Charleston, South Carolina, and Jacksonville, Florida.

Georgia’s push to become a Southern hub for electric vehicle production could send more autos across Brunswick’s docks, though perhaps not anytime soon. While Hyundai plans to open its first U.S. plant dedicated to EVs west of Savannah before the year ends, Lynch said he expects the factory to focus initially on vehicles for the U.S. market.

“Now I think it’s fairly well understood that, at least in the early years, they would not be exporting a lot of cars,” Lynch said.

Also Tuesday, the ports authority reported that the Port of Savannah handled 5.25 million container units in the latest fiscal year, down 2.3% from fiscal 2023. Savannah is the fourth-busiest U.S. port for cargo shipped in containers. The giant metal boxes are used to transport goods from consumer electronics to frozen chickens.

Container volumes lagged in the last six months of 2023 as retailers with overstuffed inventories scaled back new orders, Lynch said, but started to rebound in recent months.