Alternative businesses proposed for Savannah's shelved Jasper Port

THE development of a new maritime port on the Savannah River in Jasper County has been shelved amid revised forecasts that container capacity at the neighbouring ports in Charleston and Savannah will not be reached until 2024.

Two years ago the Georgia Department of Transportation had conveyed a 1,500-acre port site to a new joint venture owned equally by the states of South Carolina and Georgia. The plan was for the new port to start handling shipping containers when capacity at the existing public ports in Savannah and Charleston, about 12 million containers a year combined, was surpassed, an event projected to occur in 2018.

"If demand has ebbed for a new mega-container terminal - and it clearly has -then attention should be paid to attracting the types of shipping business not targeted by Charleston and Savannah," an editorial by Savannah Morning News said.

It recommends that the authorities first try to attract short-sea shipping that moves cargo along the coastal and inland waterways by having the proposed Jasper Port fitted for the roll-on/roll-off, lift-on/lift off barges used by such operations.

Secondly, it demands that Jasper Port's operations be limited to the smaller shippers that carry break-bulk and/or containers on deck, including the small independent container carriers that now operate in the Caribbean and along the east coast of South America and that use smaller-tier ports like Port Everglades and Fernandina.

Thirdly, it would like the facility to accommodate refrigerated (reefer) shipping operations, especially for the importation and exportation of poultry, beef and other perishables.
(Source:www.schednet.com)