At the beginning of August 2025, an extraordinary general meeting of shareholders of the Middle Corridor Multimodal joint venture, established in 2023, was held in Baku with the participation of representatives of the railway administrations of Azerbaijan, Georgia and Kazakhstan.
During the meeting, issues related to the implementation of measures aimed at digitising processes and eliminating bottlenecks in the central corridor were discussed. In order to ensure the stability of the traffic schedule and delivery deadlines, it is planned to introduce joint monitoring of train movements.
The participants unanimously approved the joint venture between the Chinese railway subsidiary (CR) — China Railway Container Transport (CRCT), which was confirmed by a relevant protocol. It is expected that the integration of China’s leading container transport operator into the joint venture will contribute to increasing the potential of the central corridor and improving customer service, including through the implementation of a ‘one-stop shop’ technology.
Currently, the delivery time for goods from China to Europe via the central corridor is 15–18 days, which is twice as fast as sea transport. Freight traffic in the corridor is growing rapidly: while 287 container trains from China were received in Azerbaijan in 2024, 225 trains were received in the first seven months of 2025, transporting approximately 24,000 TEU.
