SC-Ga.’s Jasper port barely treading water after 19 years

The short-term prospects for the long-planned megaport in Jasper County aren’t gaining much steam.

In fact, they appear to be nearly dead in the water. 

At one of his first public appearances before lawmakers, S.C. State Ports Authority CEO Micah Mallace provided a update last week about the Jasper Ocean Terminal that South Carolina and Georgia vowed to develop together along the Savannah River nearly two decades ago.

“Where are we with that now?” asked Rep. David Weeks, D-Sumter.

Mallace, with his first 100 days under his belt, replied that the SPA’s Peach State’s counterpart isn’t as engaged as it was earlier on in the drawn-out process.

“I think that the Georgia Ports Authority has been clear in their intentions and that they wish to deliver more infrastructure, more capacity that they control individually … on the Georgia side of the river, if you will,” he said Jan. 28.

He added that South Carolina’s nearest maritime rival “enjoys ample capacity for the foreseeable future for the next couple of decades.”

“We remain committed to delivering something in Jasper at the right time but certainly don’t have the funding nor the demand to do so in the short term,” Mallace said of the SPA. 

Rep. Leon Stavrinakis of Charleston chimed in that it “doesn’t sound like you have a partner right now” for the project.

“That’s right,” Mallace said.

The 1,500-acre site on the South Carolina side of the Savannah River was was first identified as a prime deep-water maritime hub location about 40 years ago.

The two states formally agreed to pursue the deal together in March 2007 and acquired the site near Ridgeland the following year for $7.6 million. They’ve since contributed a total of roughly $20 million over the years to pay for preliminary engineering studies, consultants and other expenses. 

The original goal was to be open in 2025.

The Jasper terminal would be a $5 billion game changer for the Southeast shipping industry, outfitted with up to 10  berths that could handle as many as 7 million cargo containers a year. County leaders were eager to build the terminal as quickly as possible to create thousands of jobs and expand the tax base.

The timing was reassessed and pushed back in 2018, when a new forecast showed the new terminal wouldn’t be needed until 2035 at the earliest, a decade later than the previous estimate.

By then, Georgia was starting to move on. It chose in 2019 to stick close to home by outlining plans to convert about 200 acres up the river on Hutchinson Island near downtown Savannah into a three-ship container terminal that’s expected to open in 2030. 

The decision pushed work at the Jasper site even further back.

The Port of Charleston, meanwhile, saw an unexpected expansion opportunity drop in its lap when WestRock Co. agreed to sell its shuttered Cooper River paper mill to the SPA two years ago. The $110 million purchase is expected to more give the authority’s neighboring North Charleston Terminal room to grow through 2050 or beyond.

For now, all preliminary work at the Jasper port property is on hold. The six-member board that South Carolina and Georgia created to move the project along hasn’t met since October 2024. Its website hasn’t been updated.

Andy Fulghum, Jasper County’s administrator, said in an email that he and other local officials have “been at this a long time” but they understand “all of this is market-driven.”

He also was appreciative that the area’s Statehouse delegation for helping redirect funding from the idled terminal effort “to assist us with some current economic development projects.”

“This makes sense and will help us to better respond to current landside port-related development interest in that area,” he said.

A $1.8 million budget request last week will go toward a new trade park in Jasper that, ironically, will handle cargo shipments from the Port of Savannah.