STOCK MARKET WATCH -- Tuesday, 28 October 2014

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36. Savannah Surges as Major Port for Imports on U.S. Growth

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-10-28/savannah-surges-as-major-port-for-imports-on-u-s-growth.html

Blueberries from Chile, Peru and Brazil may soon be heading toward U.S. tables via Savannah, Georgia, opening another shipping market in the city’s emergence as a major trade hub.

With a population of just 143,000, Savannah trails only New York City as an East Coast container port and ranks No. 4 nationally after Los Angeles and Long Beach, California, according to Datamyne and compiled by Bloomberg.

“Not only have we been the fastest-growing port in the U.S. for a decade now,” Curtis Foltz, executive director of the Georgia Ports Authority, said at the organization’s annual meeting in September. “But we’re now in a position to grow and become No. 1. Something that was unfathomable a decade ago is something that is at least within our sight.”

The city best known for its haunted-house tours and moss-draped trees has been the fastest-growing major U.S. harbor for most of the last decade with an average annual growth rate of 11 percent. Once a sleepy outpost for timber and white-clay exports, Savannah has leapfrogged Baltimore, Miami, Charleston, Norfolk and Philadelphia thanks to its transportation network and the economic expansion in the U.S. and southeast region.