SAVANNAH, Ga. — A new container terminal on Hutchison Island cleared its biggest federal hurdle this week, as Georgia Ports Authority leaders announced to the Savannah business community Wednesday that federal regulators at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers have approved the project permit.
President Kevin Price shared the news Oct. 14 at the yearly State of the Port address, held at the Savannah Convention Center. The Corps review took three years. Work on the 350-acre Savannah Container Terminal is slated to start in January 2028, with completion expected in the mid-2030s.
The site is designed for 3.5 million TEU, the standard 20-foot container unit, and for the biggest ships now sailing. Once it opens, Savannah could move 12 million TEU a year, up from about 7.75 million today. For scale, the Garden City Terminal, the largest single container terminal in the Western Hemisphere with nearly 2 miles of continuous berthing, handled 5.7 million TEUs in fiscal 2025, an 8.6 percent rise over the year before that made it the quickest-growing major container gateway.
The address also marked a leadership handoff. Chief executive Griff Lynch plans to retire Aug. 1, 2027, after 16 years with the authority, and Price is set to follow him. Since Lynch arrived in 2011 as chief operating officer, port revenue has grown 213 percent and container volume is up 90 percent.
Price also gave updates on Ocean Terminal, the Talmadge Bridge and the harbor deepening work. For Chatham County employers and port workers, the permit sets a long runway: roughly a decade of planning and building before the first ships tie up at the island berths.
