The Port of Savannah received four Super Post-Panamax ship-to-shore cranes Thursday, Aug. 24, upgrading the crane fleet to 34 machines at Garden City Terminal after four older cranes are retired and recycled, according to the company's release.
Designed by Konecranes of Finland, the all-electric cranes arrived on the vessel BigLift Barentsz.
Two of the cranes will be 295 feet tall and two will be 306 feet tall at the highest point when fully assembled. The reach of the cranes will be 22 and 24 containers wide, respectively. The taller cranes will be offloaded at Berth 1 at Garden City Terminal, the others will be installed on the upriver end of the terminal, at Berth 9.
Ship-to-shore cranes are the workhorses of container port operations, unloading and loading cargo from the container ships that call on the port.
GPA received a previous batch of four cranes in February to work the recently renovated Berth 1, which is now capable of serving vessels with a capacity of 16,000+ twenty-foot equivalent container units. The cranes and improved dock increase Garden City Terminal berth productivity by 25 percent or 1.5 million TEUs of annual capacity.
The new equipment is part of GPA’s $1.9 billion infrastructure improvement plan to keep pace with future supply chain needs.