The Middle Corridor moves west

The Trans-Caspian International Transport Route had a good eight months. It also had the same eight months it has had every year since the traffic started moving: heavy going one way, thin going the other. The second fact is the one that decides what the route costs.

What the operators reported

ADY Express, the container arm of Azerbaijan Railways, put January–August 2026 traffic at 53,574 TEU, against 48,326 TEU over the same months of 2025. That is growth of about 11 per cent, carried on 265 block trains.

The direction of that traffic is the part worth reading twice. 42,642 TEU moved westbound. 10,932 moved eastbound. Close to four containers leave Central Asia and China for Europe for every one that comes back.

The growth also needs a baseline. By the Kazakh transport ministry’s count the corridor carried 4.48 million tonnes in 2024 and 4.12 million tonnes in 2025, so last year was a step back, not a step forward. Some of this year’s increase is recovery. The ministry also put the route’s 2025 container traffic at about 77,000 TEU. That figure covers the whole corridor over a full year and is not directly comparable with ADY Express’s eight-month count on its own services.

Two growth figures that measure different things

Kazakhstan’s transport ministry gave a separate set of numbers at the Georgian International Maritime Forum in Batumi, where Deputy Minister Zhanibek Taizhanov reported total corridor volume up 22 per cent over the same eight months, and east–west transit specifically up 55 per cent.

These do not contradict the container figures, and they are not a second opinion on them. The report of the Batumi remarks does not give a unit, but the ministry reports its annual corridor totals in tonnes, which would bring in bulk cargo that never sees a container. The 55 per cent is transit in one direction only. A reader comparing 22 per cent, 55 per cent and 11 per cent is comparing three different quantities. The gap between them is not a discrepancy to resolve. It is a reminder to say which one is being cited.

Why the imbalance is the constraint

An empty container is not free to move. It occupies a slot on the Caspian ferry, a wagon on the Kazakh and Azerbaijani networks, and a handling cycle at each of the transfer points the route requires. Somebody pays for that, and on a four-to-one route the somebody is the westbound shipper.

The railways know this. Emil Mammadov, an adviser at Azerbaijan Railways, told the Black Sea and Caspian Freight Forum in Baku that backhaul freight is what would let the corridor raise volumes and bring down costs, and named automotive products as a possible eastbound cargo. The examples so far are small: in May a single train of fifty 40-foot containers carrying household refrigerators left Izmir for China.

This is why the corridor’s rates stay well above deep-sea shipping, which OSW describes as several times cheaper, and why the route tends to win business after a disruption elsewhere and lose some of it once the disruption clears. The 2025 dip fits that pattern. Capacity investment does not fix this. Neither does a political decision to prefer the route. Only eastbound cargo does.

How small the route still is

The growth rates look large because the base is small. The corridor carried 0.8 million tonnes in 2018. Carnegie’s Friedrich Conradi puts its current volume at about 6 per cent of the northern route’s annual capacity of 100 million tonnes. Even a year of 20 per cent growth leaves the Middle Corridor a supplementary route for a narrow set of shippers, not a replacement for the line through Russia.

The route has become faster. Kazakhstan’s ministry says transit times have fallen from 28–32 days to 13–17 days. That matters for cargo that cannot wait for a ship, but it narrows the gap with deep-sea on time without closing it on price, and price is where the backhaul problem bites.

The case for patience

The strongest counter-argument is that the imbalance is a stage, not a permanent condition, and that the money now committed will change the economics. There is something in this. In February the World Bank approved an $846 million guarantee to help Kazakhstan Temir Zholy raise $1.41 billion, with a $564 million co-guarantee from the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. The first component is a new 322.3 km line between Mointy and Kyzylzhar that cuts 149 km from the route and allows double-stacked containers. The bank’s stated aim is to triple freight volumes and halve end-to-end transit times by 2030. Kazakhstan is also building a five million-tonne terminal at Kuryk and has opened a 120,000 TEU terminal at Poti, two container vessels are due from the Baku shipyard in 2027, and the ministry’s target is 300,000 TEU by 2029.

Cheaper and faster westbound service would help, and double-stacking lowers the cost of every box, empty or full. But the argument has limits. A four-to-one imbalance on a larger, faster network is still a four-to-one imbalance, and a 300,000 TEU target reached mainly westbound would mean more empty boxes going back, not fewer. The investment raises the ceiling. It does not fill the return leg.

There is also a physical risk that money cannot easily buy away. Carnegie reports that the falling Caspian Sea has already cut rail tank car ferry transport on the Baku–Kuryk route by 22 per cent and wagon transport by 10 per cent. A route whose sea leg is losing depth is a harder sell for a shipper deciding whether to commit a regular eastbound flow.

What would change it

• Consolidated eastbound loads out of Central Europe and Türkiye, of the kind the Izmir refrigerator train showed is possible but not yet routine.
• Eastbound demand for European manufactured goods in Central Asia and China — the return direction of the traffic that made the corridor work westbound.
• Published, stable through-tariffs. A shipper cannot plan a backhaul against a price that has to be assembled leg by leg across several national railways and a sea crossing.
• Ferry capacity on the Caspian that holds up as water levels fall.

What to watch

The next useful figure is not the annual total. It is the eastbound share. If the ratio moves from four-to-one toward three-to-one over a full year, the corridor’s economics change and the volume growth becomes durable. If the ratio holds while the totals rise, the route is getting busier without getting cheaper, and the growth will stay hostage to whatever is going wrong on the alternatives.

Two other markers are worth tracking. The first is whether full-year 2026 tonnage clears the 2024 peak of 4.48 million tonnes. If it does not, the recovery is only a recovery. The second is progress on the Mointy–Kyzylzhar line and the Kuryk terminal, because those are the projects that would make eastbound rates competitive enough for European exporters to try the route. And the Caspian’s water level now belongs on any list of indicators for this corridor, alongside its trade figures.

Sources

• Times of Central Asia, “Middle Corridor Freight Grows, but Eastbound Cargo Lags”, 10 September 2026 (ADY Express figures)
• Trend, “Middle Corridor freight volume rises in Jan-Aug 2026”, 9 September 2026 (Kazakhstan Ministry of Transport)
• OSW, “A safer alternative: growing interest in the Middle Corridor in Central Asia”, 23 April 2026
• Carnegie Endowment, Friedrich Conradi, “The Much-Touted Middle Corridor Transport Route Could Prove a Dead End”, 29 April 2026
• World Bank, “World Bank Support to Enhance Rail Connectivity and Logistics in Kazakhstan”, 19 February 2026
• The Astana Times, “Trans-Caspian Transport Route Cargo Volumes Increase Fivefold in Seven Years”, 10 March 2026 (Kazakhstan Ministry of Transport)