Georgia Ports director says Port of Savannah 'not at a standstill' amid supply chain crunch

The following is an excerpt from an Oct. 15 press conference with Griff Lynch, executive director of the Georgia Ports Authority. Questions have been inserted to give context, and Lynch's comments have been condensed in the interest of space. Hear Lynch's full remarks on the Oct. 19 episode of "The Commute" podcast. Search “The Commute with @SavannahOpinion" on mobile device apps.

Question: Turn on the radio or pick up a newspaper today, and we he read about disruptions in the global supply chain and port activity. Here in Savannah, your yards are full of containers and there are container ships waiting offshore to come in and offload more cargo. Is this about a buildup in inventory around holiday shopping?

Griff Lynch: "Santa Claus is going to come to this town, and we're going to get it done. There's going to be some challenges for sure, but we have polled some of our largest customers, the retail customers, and they are cautiously optimistic that they'll be able to get most of their goods in before Christmas."

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Q: President Joe Biden recently ordered ports in Los Angeles and Long Beach to move to around-the-clock operations to try and alleviate the bottleneck. What is the situation here?

GL: "Georgia Ports Authority employees (and longshoremen) work 24-7 here. Our bar pilots are constantly moving ships with the tide. Everybody's doing what they can do. We still have a lot of containers on terminal, but just in the last few weeks, we've seen a 70% reduction in the long-term imports. That means those are containers that have been sitting here for three to four weeks, we've got that down by 70%. That's thanks to the trucking community, the warehouse community and our major retail customers. This terminal is very fluid. We are not at a standstill. These containers are not stuck here because they can't be pulled out."

Q: Even with recent progress, anybody who drives past the port these days sees containers stacked high in places they've never seen before. With all those ships waiting offshore, every container you move is replaced pretty quickly by other containers. What is your strategy to catch up and stay ahead of the traffic?

GL: "Rail freight. We are establishing what we call the Supply Chain Relief Program where we're taking freight and sending it to underutilized rail facilities. Whereas most ports are full, there are rail facilities and inland locations that are not full. So how can we use them better? Cargo is moving. We are seeing it get out to the warehouses. And now we need to see that next connection so we can get into the stores. In every crisis there is opportunity, and it's amazing to see what's happening at the ports and in the state of Georgia."

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Q: What is GPA doing with the local trucking community and logistics community in the way of providing additional help?

GL: "We're coordinating constantly with the shippers, the cargo owners and the truckers to get a sense of what's happening. We've increased our gate hours. We start at 6 in the morning. We don't close for lunch; they work right through to 6 p.m. at night. We operate a Saturday gate now. Before COVID-19, we didn't do that. When someone needs a night gate now, we do them. We have gates that go to 11 o'clock at night, if necessary. We're seeing that very often."

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Q: Do you envision the volume you are currently seeing to ease at some point? Or is this the new reality?

GL: "I think that's the question of the day. We do think that the volume will normalize eventually. Remember, this goes back a year-and-a-half ago, the supply chain was disrupted. There was very little cargo moving and retailers' inventory got used up. So they had to not only build inventory, but also get ready for increased consumption. Because when people went home, during COVID, they bought more and they used more. So I think we're going to see this settle down in sometime in 2022. It will not sustain."