NUR-SULTAN

A major dry port in Kazakhstan at the border with China continues operations despite the pandemic, increasing the passage of cargo flows and processing 500 containers daily.

The KTZE-Khorgos Gateway dry port is Kazakhstan’s most important transport and logistics centre. It also connects the markets of China and Europe, passing through the countries of Central Asia, Turkey and the countries of the Persian Gulf.

Located near the city of Zharkent in Almaty region, the Khorgos Eastern Gate SEZ was established by the Kazakhstan government in 2011 to boost the country’s exports and covers 600 hectares area of land that houses a dry port, logistic and production zones, its website says.

It is also one of the central hubs for a railway network connecting China and Europe, on which trains currently shuttle goods from laptops to wine between 27 Chinese cities and 11 European cities including London and Duisburg.

Some 180 people work at the KTZE-Khorgos Gateway. There were no reductions during the lockdown, on the contrary, the volume of work increased, partly due to the closure of the border for motor vehicles.

In 2020, the volume of traffic amounted to 200,000 TEU. The port processed and transport 102,000 TEU which is about 80-90,000 containers, in the first half of this year.

Consumer goods, metals, chemicals, oversized cargo, metro cars, and electric cars are mainly transported between the countries.

The port performs various cargo operations: receiving and sending trains, reloading cargo from cars of one-gauge width (1,435 mm) to cars of another width (1520 mm) and vice versa, reloading trucks, forming container trains, as well as operations performed at warehouses and container sites: loading, sorting, storage, dispatch of goods, storage of dangerous goods and with certain temperature requirements, and so on.

“Our work is in full swing. Now we are loading containers, we will send them further to Europe. We process 10-12 trains per day, which is 500 containers. We unload them with a narrow gauge and send them on a wide gauge,” Nuriddin Abaydulayev, production department management head, told Kazinform.

According to Abaydulayev, three gantry container cranes – RMG 1, 2 and 3-operate on six railway tracks. Each can lift cargo weighing up to 41 tonnes.

The territory also has a specialised container platform for the one-time storage of more than 18,000 containers of TEU (twenty-foot equivalent unit), two temporary storage warehouses with a total area of 10,000 square meters as well as its own workshop for the repair and maintenance of special equipment.