Logistics Reading time: 14 minutes
Data period: 2024–2025 and the available part of 2026. Infrastructure data are as at August 2026.
Updated: quarterly — traffic volumes and the status of lines under construction change quickly.
01 / Section
Traffic volume on the Trans-Caspian route
4.1–4.5 million tonnes a year
2024–2025
Growth over five years
sixfold (from ~0.8 million tonnes)
2020 → 2025
Delivery time from China to Europe
18–23 days against 45–55 days via Suez
2026
Target capacity of the corridor
10 million tonnes by 2027, about 11 million tonnes by 2030
plan
Total transit through Kazakhstan
36.9 million tonnes, of which 90% by rail
2025
World Bank guarantee for KTZ financing
USD 846 million, mobilising USD 1.41 billion
February 2026
Capacity of the corridor relative to the northern route
about 6%
estimate for 2026
02 / Section
The Middle Corridor is the only overland route from China to Europe that does not cross Russian territory. That fact alone explains all the interest of the past four years: traffic grew from 586 thousand tonnes in 2021 to 4.5 million tonnes in 2024, that is almost eightfold. In February 2026 the World Bank issued a guarantee of USD 846 million, mobilising USD 1.41 billion of commercial financing for the Kazakhstani railway. The European Union is holding a Global Gateway package of EUR 12 billion for transport infrastructure in Central Asia.
Then begins what is mentioned less often in presentations. The route transships cargo twice — at the border with China because of the different track gauge, and on the Caspian from rail to ferry. The level of the Caspian Sea is falling by about 30 centimetres a year, and this has already reduced the number of ferry sailings. There are not enough vessels: the purchase of ships is still at the feasibility stage. According to the Carnegie Endowment, the entire Middle Corridor handles about 6% of what the northern route through Russia is able to carry — which makes it not a replacement but a window of opportunity that may narrow.
For an investor there is a practical conclusion here, and it is not about “getting into transit”. The money on this route today is earned not so much by carrying cargo as by clearing its bottlenecks: vessels, terminals, the container fleet, cargo handling, document flow. Below is where exactly, and with what qualifications.
03 / Section
| Year | Traffic volume on the route |
|---|---|
| 2019 | 759 thousand tonnes |
| 2020 | 783 thousand tonnes |
| 2021 | 586 thousand tonnes |
| 2022 | 1.49 million tonnes |
| 2023 | 2.76 million tonnes |
| 2024 | 4.48 million tonnes |
| 2025 | 4.12 million tonnes |
An honest qualification is needed here. The series published on government data shows a decline in 2025 against 2024 of about 8%. Yet individual official statements and half-year summaries for the same period speak of growth: 2.3 million tonnes in the first half of 2025, up 7% year on year. We neither resolve nor smooth over this discrepancy: most probably different agencies count “corridor volume” differently — some only the Trans-Caspian section, others the whole overland route. What matters for an investor is to know that there is no single recognised figure for 2025, and that the rate of growth has in any case slowed sharply: from plus 62% in 2024 to single digits in 2025.
The container segment is growing faster than the total. In 2024 container traffic on the route grew 2.6 times, to 50.5 thousand TEU; 358 container block trains ran from China against a handful a year earlier. In the first quarter of 2026 there were 125 trains, up 34% year on year, against a plan of 600 trains for the year.
A separate factor in 2026 was the closure of the Strait of Hormuz on 28 February. Weekly booking requests for the corridor rose several times over. This is a matter of circumstance rather than a structural trend and must not be built into a long-term model, but it did reveal the real ceiling of demand.
| Route | Delivery time from China to Europe |
|---|---|
| The Middle Corridor | 18–23 days (estimates from different sources range from 12 to 25) |
| The northern route through Russia | 12–15 days under normal operation |
| The sea route via Suez | 45–55 days |
The conclusion from this table is usually given by halves. Yes, the Middle Corridor is two and a half times faster than the sea route. But it is not faster than the northern route through Russia when that route is working normally. The corridor’s competitive advantage today is political rather than infrastructural: it makes it possible to avoid entering Russian territory. The World Bank’s target is to halve end-to-end transit time by 2030; until then the advantage in transit times rests on external circumstances.
The Middle Corridor is not the whole of Kazakhstani transit but a part of it. Total transit through the country in 2025 was 36.9 million tonnes, up 6.6%, of which about 90% (33.1 million tonnes) went by rail. In the first half of 2026 it was 21.7 million tonnes. Total freight turnover of the Kazakhstani railway in 2025 was 319.8 million tonnes.
These three figures are regularly mixed up in publications, with one passed off as another. Transit along the Middle Corridor is 4 million tonnes; all transit through Kazakhstan is 37 million tonnes; the entire freight turnover of KTZ is 320 million tonnes. These are three different quantities, differing by almost two orders of magnitude.
04 / Section
Node 1
Two crossings: Dostyk — Alashankou and Altynkol — Khorgos. Actual freight turnover at Dostyk in 2024 was 18.3 million tonnes, up 14.6%. The capacity of the Altynkol — Khorgos direction is being almost doubled, from 18 to 33 pairs of trains a day; the upgrade is due to be completed in 2026. At both crossings cargo is transshipped: the gauge in Kazakhstan is 1520 mm, in China 1435 mm.
Node 2
Container capacity has been increased from 540 to 800 thousand TEU a year, with the upgrade completed in September 2025. The 129.8-hectare terminal is built into a special economic zone with logistics and industrial zones of 225 hectares each. Since 2017 the operator’s ownership structure has included China’s COSCO Shipping and the port of Lianyungang — jointly 49%.
Node 3
Second tracks have been commissioned on the Dostyk — Moyynty section (more than 830 km). The Moyynty — Kyzylzhar line, over 300 km long, shortens the route by 149 km and is due to open in 2026. The bypass line around Almaty has been launched. The Bakhty — Ayagoz line, 303 km, is under construction with the participation of China Communications Construction Company, with completion due before the end of 2027.
Node 4
The port of Aktau is a container hub with a capacity of 140 thousand TEU a year and the potential to expand to 240 thousand; the first stage of dredging is being completed by the end of 2026 and the extension of the berths by the end of 2027. 7 vessels operate on the Aktau — Baku line, against a plan of 15. At the port of Kuryk, ferry services to Baku are served by 7 ferries, against a plan of 17 by 2030; the handling time for a rail ferry has been cut from 18 to 12 hours, and for a vehicle ferry from 10 to 6.
⚠ We note separately: the state’s official investment portal still publishes 2018 data for the port of Kuryk. They must not be relied upon when preparing a project.
Node 5
The Azerbaijani port of Alat has a capacity of 150 thousand TEU with plans to expand to 500 thousand and 25 million tonnes of cargo. The Georgian ports of Poti and Batumi are working at the limit of their capacity; the deep-water port of Anaklia, which was meant to relieve them, is underfunded — the Georgian government cut its investment from USD 56 to 21 million.
Financing
The World Bank — a guarantee of USD 846 million, mobilising USD 1.41 billion of commercial financing, plus a co-guarantee from the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank of USD 564 million. The European Union — a Global Gateway package of EUR 12 billion for transport in Central Asia. Estimates of the total commitments of international institutions to the corridor differ: from EUR 10 billion in a 2024 estimate to EUR 22 billion in broader calculations; the figures are counted on different perimeters and are not additive.
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The logic is simple: one should look not where volume is growing but where volume runs into a constraint. Every bottleneck is somebody’s future business.
01
The corridor’s principal operational constraint is the shortage of Ro-Ro vessels and container ships. The purchase of a fleet is still at the feasibility stage, and the plans to increase ferries from 7 to 17 by 2030 and vessels on the Aktau — Baku line from 7 to 15 cannot be met without private money. The most capital-intensive and the scarcest niche.
02
A 19-hectare plot has been reserved for a container project in the Aktau Sea Port special economic zone. A logistics park worth USD 300 million has been announced in Astana. The same category includes container depots, and the repair and storage of empties.
03
Container traffic growing 2.6 times in a year against a shortage of flat wagons is a classic equipment shortage, and it is met by leasing and operator companies.
04
Food is already present in the container flow, but there is little specialised rolling stock for it. A niche with a high margin and low competition.
05
From 1 June 2026 carriers operating vehicles over 3.5 tonnes are required to register waybills and consignment notes in the Unified Transport Document Management System. As a gauge of market maturity: the share of shipments using electronic documents between Russia and Kazakhstan is 81%. The regulatory requirement creates demand for integration and service solutions.
06
The route’s association has no single tariff schedule, and companies plan their shipments themselves. That is bad for the market and good for whoever can put together an end-to-end service.
07
A separate rationale: not to carry other people’s cargo but to site production along the route, using the special economic zone regime and access to both markets. Kazakhstan’s logistics ecosystem comprises four special economic zones of a logistics profile (“Khorgos — Eastern Gate”, the Khorgos International Centre for Cross-Border Cooperation, “Aktau Sea Port”, TURAN) and two industrial zones.
06 / Section
Residency in a special economic zone of a logistics profile confers exemption from corporate income tax, zero rates of land tax and property tax, and customs preferences on imported equipment. A project in a priority sector may qualify for an investment contract — from 1 January 2026 there are three types, with different thresholds for the amount invested.
Separately: from 1 June 2026 registration of shipping documents in the state digital system is mandatory — an operational requirement for any carrier working in the country.
An analysis of support measures by type, threshold and article is given in the paper “State support measures and preferences: what the state actually provides”.
07 / Section
The sea level has been falling by about 30 cm a year since 2020; between 1996 and 2025 the area of the sea shrank by almost 29 thousand km². The forecast is that the trend will continue for the next 10–15 years. A direct consequence has already been recorded: the number of rail ferry sailings has fallen by 22% and wagon traffic by 10%. Dredging at Aktau eases the problem but does not remove it: this is a natural process, not a question of investment.
The shipbuilding cycle takes years. Until the fleet is enlarged, any investment in rail approaches runs into the same Caspian node.
The difference in gauge with China and the transfer onto a ferry are two unavoidable breaks in the chain. Each adds time, cost and the risk of damage to the cargo.
The route’s association has no single tariff schedule, and rates are revised annually. Tariff fragmentation is estimated to affect the cost of carriage by 15–25%. For an investor this means it is impossible to fix the cost of logistics over the horizon of a contract.
The Carnegie Endowment’s assessment of April 2026: the Middle Corridor handles about 6% of the capacity of the northern route through Russia, estimated at 100 million tonnes a year. If geopolitical constraints ease, part of the freight flow will return to the shorter and cheaper route. A model must not be built on the assumption that the present flow is secured for good.
The Georgian ports are at their limit, Anaklia is underfunded, and the section of the route through Armenia runs about 43 km from the border with Iran. The Kazakhstani part of the corridor may be cleared in full and still run into the neighbouring section.
Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey, China and the European Union — the alignment of tariffs, schedules and customs procedures is slow. Back in April 2024 the World Bank named ten priority measures to remove bottlenecks; some have been carried out, but the key ones — the fleet and unified tariffs — have not.
08 / Section
The corridor is not a bet on transit but a bet on clearing it. Carriage as such is a low-margin business with an unpredictable tariff and dependence on six jurisdictions. The shortages, however, exist in specific places: vessels, terminals, the container fleet, temperature-controlled transport, digital document flow. There the margin is higher and the competition lower.
The planning horizon differs from niche to niche. Soft constraints (tariffs, customs, document flow) are removed quickly and cheaply — which means the window for entry there is shorter. Hard ones (fleet, dredging, berths) require capital and years — but they are also protected from a competitor appearing quickly.
What to check before deciding:
We support such projects from the choice of site and regime through to the investment contract and negotiations with operators. If you have a cargo base or equipment, the conversation should start with that rather than with the route.
09 / Section
The paper in PDF — the same version as on the page, with its tables and sources. We will send it by email.
The email will be sent to info@sabr.asia with the subject of the paper.
