A container train from China arrived last week in the port of Aktau on Kazakhstan’s Caspian coast. Kazakhstan’s national railway company, Kazakhstan Temir Zholy, announced that it was the 200th container train since the beginning of 2024. Last year, 11 container trains went through Aktau Port along the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route (TITR), known as the Middle Corridor.
The Middle Corridor is an 11,000-kilometer international multimodal transport corridor that runs from China to Europe via Kazakhstan, the Caspian Sea, Azerbaijan, Georgia, the Black Sea, and Turkey.
The container train originally departed from the Kazakhstan terminal in Xi’an (China). From Aktau, it will depart for Azerbaijan on a barge across the Caspian Sea.
The Kazakh terminal in Xi’an is an important logistics hub that consolidates cargo from various provinces of China. It has given a new impetus to the development of the TITR.
In November 2023, Kazakhstan and China signed a number of agreements to develop the TITR, including a route for China-Europe container trains.
Middle Corridor Multimodal Ltd. is a joint venture that was established at the Astana International Financial Center, bringing together the railway administrations of Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, and Georgia to manage the route on a parity basis.
The Kazakhstani terminal in the dry port of Xi’an opened in February 2024. It consolidates 40% of all container trains heading towards Kazakhstan, which has contributed to a significant increase in transit traffic along the TITR.
Transportation along the TITR is growing steadily. In 2023, 2.8 million tons of cargo were transported along the route, compared to about 1.7 million tons in 2022. In the first seven months of 2024, the traffic totaled 2.56 million tons. By 2027, the capacity of the TITR is planned to increase to 10 million tons.
