Azerbaijan will build a special terminal to handle shipments of fertilisers from Central Asia at Baku International Sea Trade Port by end 2022, with an annual capacity of 2.5 million tonnes, Taleh Ziyadov, the port’s head, said.

Ziyadov said that the annual production capacity of fertilisers as urea, sulfur and others in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, the main producers of fertilisers in the region, exceeded 6-7 million tonnes.

“The volume of transportation of fertilisers from Central Asia, especially from Turkmenistan, through the Baku port, increased to 630,000 tonnes from 48,339 tonnes in 2018-2020,” Ziyadov said during the Trans-Caspian Forum organised by the U.S. Caspian Policy Centre.

The Baku port currently has a total annual capacity of 15 million tonnes.

In 2020, more than 4.8 million tonnes of cargo were transported through the port, 20 percent more than in 2019.

In the first quarter of 2021, total cargo traffic was more than 1.4 million tonnes, 17 percent more than in the same period last year.