Excess capacity at the logistics center is often challenging. It involves meeting demand, managing inventory capacity, and addressing all infrastructure-related issues. With respect to the present development trends of the Middle Corridor, the 25-30% load of the 11 million tons annual capacity of the Absheron Logistics Center serves as more of a strategic reserve. The center, which became Azerbaijan's first internationally certified private logistics center established in 2018 in the Garadagh region of Baku on more than 100 hectares, processes 85% of all rail cargos arriving in Azerbaijan. But the combined imports and transit cargos carried by rail annually in Azerbaijan amount to merely a tiny part of the capacity of the center, which is 2.4-2.7 million tons a year. It is only through the prism of this information, together with the growth of the corridor, that one can see the meaning of this imbalance: demand for container transportation increased by 450-500% in just a week of March 2026 compared to the corresponding period in 2025. At such growth rates, the shortage of processing capacity cannot be afforded by any corridor.

Middle Corridor developments in 2025 and 2026 have consistently surpassed all projections for it. The Alat container terminal in Azerbaijan handled 105,000 TEU at the end of 2025, marking a 37% year-on-year rise and becoming the first time that it has handled more than 100,000 TEU since the facility began operations in 2018. For the first eleven months of 2025, Azerbaijan Railways transported 350 block trains from China, representing a 34% year-on-year growth, handling 123,992 TEU, about 18% more than 2024. The Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway, which received upgrades to handle 5 million tonnes per annum of cargo in its Georgian leg last month, saw an impressive 35% rise in weekly freight traffic in a single week in March 2026 due to the Iran war detouring trade to the route.

Cargo throughput within the corridor expanded from 0.6 – 0.8 million tonnes during 2019-2021 to more than 4.5 million tonnes in 2024, that is, a sixfold expansion in just three years,........

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