ALMATY PORT HUB
Almaty is 300 km from the nearest water that floats cargo — and its “port” is Khorgos: the Eastern Gate dry port, enlarged to 800,000 TEU in September 2025, where the China–Europe container trains change gauge at the border.
The Khorgos–Eastern Gate dry port, 300 km east of the city at the Chinese border, is Almaty’s real seaport: a 129.8-hectare container terminal inside a special economic zone, upgraded in September 2025 from 540,000 to 800,000 TEU a year, jointly held by China’s COSCO and the port of Lianyungang (49%). Here every China–Europe train is lifted from China’s 1,435 mm gauge to Kazakhstan’s 1,520 mm; the sister crossing at Dostyk moved 18.3 million tonnes in 2024, and the Altynkol–Khorgos line is being doubled from 18 to 33 train pairs a day, due to complete in 2026.
The Middle Corridor — China to Europe in 18–23 days against 45–55 via Suez — ran 4.12 million tonnes in 2025, six times the 2020 level, with container trains planned at 600 for 2026 after 125 in Q1 (+34%). Almaty sits at the corridor’s eastern shoulder: the bypass freight ring, the logistics parks along the Korday road, and the daily business of clearing, consolidating and forwarding that now underwrites the city’s warehousing boom. For travellers the “port” remains metaphorical — Big Almaty Lake floats nothing larger than a paddle — but the border bus to Ürümqi runs through Khorgos, which makes it the one piece of the corridor a tourist can ride.
THE TIO READ
If you ship east-west, price Khorgos transit times against Dostyk: the doubled Altynkol line changes the arithmetic through 2026. If you visit, the Ürümqi bus is the corridor in miniature — gauge change, border hall, and a lesson in why Central Asia’s ports are made of rail.
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