G20 china_web

ADVOCACY
BAKU INTERNATIONAL SEA TRADE PORT
Baku: your logistics
hub in Eurasia
The name has taken many forms –
Atropates, Aturpatakan, Adharbaygan,
Azarbaydjan and, nowadays,
Azerbaijan. But no matter what the
name, the location has attracted great
conquerors, merchants and travellers of the world
since the earliest of times.
At the heart of the Ancient Silk Road, the territory
of the present day Azerbaijan has hosted a number
of important caravanserais and big regional trading
centres. Its ancient cities, Baku, Barda, Shamakhi
and Ganja, produced natural dyes, animal (fish)
glue, jewellery, and oil and have rung to the cries
of merchants selling silk, paper, porcelain and
grain from distant China, leather, furs and wax
from Russia, Florence and Genoa. The Azerbaijani
cities and caravanserais have habitually acted as
commercial nodes and major ‘hub and spoke’ centres
along the East-West and the North-South corridors.
Transcontinental services
Today, with the revival of the New Silk Road and
China’s ‘One Belt, One Road’ strategy linking China
and Europe via land, the Central Eurasia is at the
verge of giving birth to the megacities and land-based
hubs of the 21st century.
Located at the strategic crossroads of Europe and
Asia and nearby the sizeable markets like China,
Turkey, Iran and Russia, Azerbaijan and its new Baku
International Sea Trade Port (aka Port of Baku) is
poised to become the biggest trade and logistics hub
of Eurasia. The upcoming completion of the Baku-
Tbilisi-Kars railway project that will link railways of
Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey with the European
Union will offer new opportunities for traders in
China and the Far East to transport their cargo via a
shorter and faster land-based route.
Already on 3 August 2015, the first block train
carrying 82 twenty-foot containers from Northwest
China arrived in the new Port of Baku. It covered
more than 4,000 kilometers in just six days, passing
via Kazakhstan before boarding a Caspian ferry ship
to Baku. An alterative ocean route would have taken
30-35 days.
Leading in introduction of new cutting-edge and
green technologies such as self-driving buses, the
Port of Baku plays a critical role in the improved
connectivity between China and Europe. In 2007,
anticipating the need for expansion, the government
of Azerbaijan decided to move the Port from its current
home in the busy downtown to a new location in Alat,
a township of Baku 70 km south of the city centre.
The new state-of-the-art Port of Baku in Alat is being
developed over 400 hectares (ha) in three phases.
The government-funded first phase includes a
rail ferry terminal, inaugurated in September 2014, a
seven-berth general cargo quay, two Ro-Ro quays and
a service berth. Two further phases, which are likely
to be developed under a public-private partnership
(PPP) and build-operate-transfer (BOT) schemes,
will raise the Port’s capacity to 25 million tonnes of
general cargo and up to 1 million TEUs per year.
Introducing the Free Trade Zone
In addition, Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev has
recently announced the development of Jebel Alistyle
Free Trade Zone (FTZ) in and around the new
Port of Baku. The 2,000 ha FTZ envisages tailored
solutions for transport and logistics industry, the
pharmaceutical cluster, common-use oil supply base
facilities, manufacturing, packaging, labelling and
consolidation areas.
The new Port and FTZ is positioned as a hub
where international companies can use locally
produced and imported materials to add value before
shipping them on to destinations in Europe, Russia,
Turkey, Iran and Central Asia. This is a part of a larger
strategy of Azerbaijan’s president, Ilham Aliyev,
to strengthen the country’s non-oil economy and
diversify it away from hydrocarbons.
The new state-of-theart
Port of Baku in Alat
plays a pivotal role
in the government
plans for port oil in
Azerbaijan
Baku International Sea
Trade Port CJSC
pr@portofbaku.com
www.portofbaku.com