Baku Shipyard with Tools from the West Building Ships for Itself, its Caspian Littoral Neighbors and Foreign Customers Further Away

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 19 – The Baku Shipyard is transforming trade and security on the Caspian basin and helping Azerbaijan to become a major supplier of ships of all kinds to a wide variety of countries, leading Caliber journalist to describe what is is doing as “the birth of an iron colossus.”

            Timur Rzayev, says the shipyard has achieved its current prominence with equipment from Finland, the Netherlands, Germany, the Czech Republic, the UK, South Korea and Singapore and with orders from the region and  more generally (caliber.az/post/rozhdenie-zheleznogo-kolossa-tak-sozdaetsya-morskaya-mosh-azerbajdzhana).

            Many of the ships the yard has produced are in support of the Middle Corridor, a transport route “connecting China and Europe,” bypassing Russia and “passing through Azerbaijan whose importance as a transportation hub is increasing “every day,” the Caliber journalist says.

            But what is especially important is that the development of the Baku yards marks an important transition for a country that had been part of the Russian empire: it is not only charting its own way but now producing the equipment it needs to do so, rather than relying on supplies from the former imperial state.