KAZAKHSTAN: The second stage of the Dostyk TransTerminal container facility at the break of gauge on Kazakhstan’s border with China has opened. It doubles capacity to 320 000 TEU/year and provides space where containers arriving from China can be stored until there are enough to fill block trains to single destinations on the 1 520 mm gauge network.
The terminal is accessed by a 13 km branch which has been transferred to national railway KTZ and will operate with standard tariffs. Further phases of expansion to reach a throughput of 700 000 TEU/year are planned.
‘The volumes of transhipment from track to track will grow, interest in the Kazakh-Chinese border crossing will grow’, said Timur Karabayev, head of logistics group PTC Holding which owns the facility and has invested 9·2bn tenge in the second phase.
’In June 2021 we launched the first stage of the terminal, and already in August and September last year we realised that the capacity of this first stage was filled, while the interest of our customers in additional volumes remained. That is why the second stage started so quickly and that is why it was built so quickly.
’We see that after the first year of operation many companies from the business community of Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan and European countries are interested in using our terminal.’
The opening of the second phase was attended by representatives of companies including Transcontainer, Logbox, InterRail Holding, RTSB, DB Cargo Russia, China Railway Container Transport Corp and the UTLC ERA transit freight joint venture of the national railways of Kazakhstan, Russia and Belarus.
The first train to use the expanded facility carried containers of household appliances being shipped from Zhengzhou in China to Duisburg in Germany.
The expansion ‘is not only of Kazakh scale, it is a large-scale Eurasian event’, said UTLC ERA Chief Executive Alexey Grom. ‘Such projects unite countries, unite companies, unite people.’
