TBILISI PORT HUB
Tbilisi is landlocked — the Mtkvari carries promenades, not cargo. The country’s sea gates are Poti, which set a container record of ~636,000 TEU in 2025, and Batumi — with the Anaklia deep-sea port due in 2029 to change the whole equation.
The Mtkvari splits Tbilisi beautifully and uselessly: no navigable freight, no ferries, no cruise calls — the “port” of Tbilisi is a riverside promenade of bars and boat-shaped photo ops. For anything that floats commercially, the country looks 300 km west. The closest honest answer is the daily train: Tbilisi–Poti leaves Station Square at 17:30 and reaches the harbour before midnight.
Poti, run by APM Terminals, is Georgia’s largest port and the Black Sea leg of the Middle Corridor: a record ~636,000 TEU in 2025, with a new harbour crane due by the end of 2026 lifting capacity past 650,000 TEU; the full master plan designs for 2 million TEU. National container traffic grew another 4% in Q1 2026 (188,149 TEU), after a 2025 that added 17% in containers, 20% in general cargo and 31% in ferry traffic; Batumi posted a 3% container rise in Q1 2026. Behind both sits Anaklia: the deep-water port under construction with a Chinese consortium (state 51%), phase one in 2029 at 600,000 TEU — the first Georgian berth able to take Panamax and Post-Panamax hulls.
THE TIO READ
For a traveller, the port question in Tbilisi is really a question about where Georgia is going: the Middle Corridor bypasses Russia, and Poti’s cranes are its scoreboard. Ride the evening train to Poti once — the Black Sea at dawn beats any riverside bar.
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