Azernews.Az

By Rashid Shirinov

The container transportation is today widely used by the railways of all countries in the world. After World War II, this type of carriage dramatically reduced the costs of transport, supported the post-war boom in international trade, and became a major element in globalization. Container transportation eliminated the need for warehousing and for manual sorting of most shipments, reduced congestion in ports and shortened shipping time.

Given the growing demand for cargo transportation services, Azerbaijan Railways has decided to create ADY Konteyner company for container transportation.

Head of the Public Relations Department of Azerbaijan Railways Sevinj Gadirova told Trend that the decision was made given the growing demand in Azerbaijan for cargo transportation services meeting international standards, and the increasing competition in the world in block train transportation over long distances.

“ADY Konteyner was established for railway container transportations, purchase and operation of containers for transportation of various cargoes, and provision of all types of container services,” Gadirova said.

She added that the company will manage all container platforms and transportations in Azerbaijan, as well as those from the countries of the Caspian and Black Sea regions, Europe, Central Asia, the Far East and the Persian Gulf.

ADY Konteyner is also the operator of container transportation through Azerbaijan on the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route (TITR), and it is a member of the Route’s Consortium.

The agreement on creation of the TITR was signed in April 2016 in Baku by the railway authorities of Azerbaijan, Georgia and Kazakhstan. About 300,000-400,000 containers are expected to be transported via the route by 2020.

ADY Konteyner is also the freight forwarder through Azerbaijan of the first 32-container freight train that has left Kazakhstan and will pass through the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars route, Gadirova said.

The opening of the BTK railway, will take place on October 30 in Baku. The a large-scale project was constructed on the basis of a Georgian-Azerbaijani-Turkish intergovernmental agreement. The railway’s peak capacity will be 17 million tons of cargo per year. At an initial stage, this figure will be one million passengers and 6.5 million tons of cargo.

The growing interest in the transport infrastructures passing through the territory of Azerbaijan will obviously turn the country into a major transport hub in the region.

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Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov

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