ASTANA, Kazakhstan, June 7. Kazakhstan's KTZ Express (a subsidiary of Kazakhstan Railways, KTZ) and QazTrade, in partnership with the Pakistani National Logistics Corporation, have carried out a pilot multimodal transportation to the port of Jebel Ali (UAE) through Afghanistan and Pakistan (the Trans-Afghan Corridor), Trend reports.
Based on the information provided by KTZ, the cargo departed
from the Pavlodar Special Economic Zone on April 27 and was
subsequently transferred to the Zhetygen transport and logistics
center. At this center, the cargo was efficiently loaded into two
40-foot sea containers. Afterward, the containers were loaded onto
trucks using a container trailer and transported to the port of
Karachi in Pakistan.
The cargo reached Karachi in 20 days, after traveling a distance of
4,900 kilometers. The containers were loaded onto a feeder vessel
on June 1 and arrived at the port of Jebel Ali on June 3.
As KTZ noted, the total transportation period was 38 days, which was the most effective solution for the client. A total of 60 containers are planned to be transported along this route in June-July.
"This pilot project is a multimodal service that expands the capabilities of Kazakh exporters to supply products to target markets in the Middle East, South Asia, and Southeast Asia," KTZ noted.
Meanwhile, over the past three years, the volume of export transportation from Kazakhstan to Afghanistan has been growing steadily. In 2023, the volume of transportation by rail amounted to 2.7 million tons, of which 1.5 million tons were flour and grain. This is 14 percent more than in 2021.
In the next few years, exports are expected to climb by 40 percent. Meanwhile, traffic is projected to increase threefold by 2030.