The Baku International Sea Trade Port, a key hub on the Middle Corridor, will have handled 37% more containers in 2025 than the previous year and aims to increase the volume again in 2026, port chief Eldar Salakhov said.
By the end of the month, container throughput will reach 105,000 20-foot equivalent units (TEU), compared with 76,775 TEU in 2024, he said, adding the 100,000th container was dispatched earlier this week.
The port is one of the key hubs of the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route, also known as the Middle Corridor, which links China with European countries via Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey.
Some 38%–40% of cargo handled at the port consists of Chinese-origin import and transit freight.
Reaching the 100,000 TEU mark highlights Azerbaijan’s growing transit role amid rising East–West cargo flows, Salakhov told Reuters on Thursday.
He said the growth in container volumes was supported in part by the merger of the Baku port with Azerbaijan Railways in February 2025 under a decree signed by President Ilham Aliyev.
The move aimed to centralise management of the transport and logistics system and improve operational efficiency.
“We are already seeing concrete results from this decision — the synchronisation of port and rail operations has accelerated cargo handling without requiring major additional investment,” Salakhov said.
According to preliminary estimates, the port’s container throughput could exceed 110,000 TEU in 2026, he said.
The Baku port was commissioned in 2018 with a design capacity of 15 million tonnes of cargo per year, including 100,000 TEU of containers.
As a result of efficiency gains and without large-scale new investment, its effective container handling capacity is now estimated at 150,000 TEU, Salakhov said.
Salakhov said the port was currently working on an expansion of the first phase of its development, which envisages container throughput of more than 260,000 TEU, with hopes to eventually attract foreign investment to nearly double that.
He gave no timelines for the subsequent stages.
(Reuters)