Dive Brief:
- The Georgia Ports Authority announced its new inland port will open in May, according to a March 24 press release.
- The new inland port in Gainesville, Georgia, will have a direct connection to the port’s global ocean carrier network, which includes 40 ship calls per week. The service can help local manufacturers in Georgia handle freight in industries such as poultry, heavy equipment and forest products.
- The Gainesville Inland Port, formerly known as the Blue Ridge Connector, has a build-out cost of $134 million. It will have an annual capacity of 200,000 containers and is expected to help reduce truck traffic on Georgia’s highways, according to the release.
Dive Insight:
The Georgia Ports Authority is carrying out its decade-long plan to invest $5 billion in infrastructure. Its recent investment to open its inland port targets a market of 330 manufacturers while aiming to reduce truck traffic.
“While not all of these businesses are current port customers, industries from the region that rely on the Port of Savannah include heavy equipment manufacturers, apparel, appliance makers, auto parts dealers, furniture retailers, housewares, tires and more,” Tom Boyd, chief communications officer at the Georgia Ports Authority, told Supply Chain Dive in an email. “Poultry is the major export from the area too.”
Currently, trucks already move a significant amount of cargo through Gainesville, Boyd added, “so the market is ripe for expanded service.”
In addition to helping absorb some of that traffic, the new inland rail facility aims to relieve traffic congestion in Atlanta while improving the region’s air quality. It’s expected to replace an estimated 26,000 truck roundtrips in the first year alone, Georgia Ports President and CEO Griff Lynch was quoted as saying during a port board meeting.
The port authority previously targeted truck traffic with the rollout of its mobile app in 2025. The app focused on speeding up supply chain operations by sending notifications, such as changes to gate hours, to help drivers plan their day.
While the port will operate the new inland site, daily services Monday through Friday between Gainesville and the Port of Savannah will be on Norfolk Southern trains, Boyd said.
The announcement of Gainesville’s inland port comes as the port’s volumes have slowly declined. The Port of Savannah handled 3.73 million twenty-foot equivalent units, down 0.2% year over year for the fiscal year-to-date from July 2025 to February 2026. That’s a slight change from when the port said it handled record cargo volumes in 2023.
“We do see cargo volumes slowing down and forecast a drop in volumes for the remaining four months of this fiscal year,” Lynch said.
