The wind on the east coast of the Caspian Sea brushes over the wilderness, and the outline of the new port area is quietly changing the breathing rhythm of this land and sea. The flood of goods that was once blocked by capacity saturation will now find an outlet in the dual port linkage between Kurek and Aktau. This berth, which is directly connected to the railway, is injecting new throughput confidence into the Eurasian Central Corridor.

Billions of funds to build a new port area

China has invested 1 billion US dollars to build the first phase of the Kurek Port terminal in Kazakhstan, filling the gap in transportation capacity on the east bank of the central corridor. Tokayev met with representatives of Chinese companies in Shanghai, and the Ministry of Transport of Kazakhstan, Mangystau Oblast, and China Guoyou Materials Group signed a contract to implement a billion dollar dock construction project. Kurek Port is located on the east coast of the Caspian Sea, 60 kilometers away from Aktau Port. It is a newly planned professional port area with berths directly connected to railways, and goods do not need to be transferred into the city. The channel dredging will be completed in 2024, with a water depth of 7 to 8 meters, and it can accommodate large fully loaded ships.

The storage yard and railway marshalling space at Aktau Port are already saturated, and the advantages of multimodal transportation planning at Kurek Port are prominent. The first phase of supporting berths, warehousing, and railway facilities is designed with an annual throughput of 15 million tons and can provide 800 long-term positions. Combined with the Aktau Port renovation project, the total transportation capacity of Kazakhstan's Caspian Sea ports will reach 30 million tons. The coordinated layout of Aktau and Kurek ports has been formed on the east coast, greatly improving the overall loading capacity.

Dual port linkage enhances transportation capacity

The bottleneck of transportation capacity in the middle corridor is concentrated in the loading and unloading links between Lihai Shipping and West Coast ports. By 2025, there will be 390 trains passing through Azerbaijan, transporting 135000 TEUs, a year-on-year increase of 19%; In the first eight months of that year, a total of 265 trains were launched, with a growth rate of 57.7%. The surge in freight demand requires the simultaneous expansion of ports on both sides of the Taiwan Strait. Azerbaijan has promoted port renovation, and only through two-way expansion can the channel be thoroughly unblocked. Keywords: Kurek Port, Multimodal Transport, Cross Sea Transport

Channel empowers China Europe freight trains

The expansion of Kurek Port is beneficial for the China Europe freight trains in all aspects: firstly, it will consolidate the capacity of the southern line. By 2025, there will be 456 trains on the southern line, leading the growth rate of various lines and increasing demand for alternative transportation; Secondly, to improve the efficiency of equipment replacement, the Aktau Port hub has completed the transportation of 100000 TEUs across the Caspian Sea; Thirdly, reduce the overall logistics cost and balance the round-trip cargo flow. After the project is signed, the construction will officially land. The freight volume of the middle corridor has increased from 759000 tons in 2019 to 4.119 million tons in 2025, with a target of 10 million tons per year for Kazakhstan. As a core infrastructure, Kurek Port will fully unleash the transportation potential of the entire cross-border channel.Editor/Gong Ziwei