RAYONG, Thailand -- Korea’s biggest steelmaker Posco on Wednesday completed its first automotive steel plate plant in Thailand as part of moves to expand the steel business in the Southeast Asian market.

The company built a continuous galvanizing line plant named Posco-Thailand Coated Steel with an annual capacity of 450,000 tons in Amata City Industrial Estate in Rayong province, 140 kilometers southeast of Bangkok. The steelmaker broke ground for the plant in the heart of Thailand’s automotive industry in September 2014 at a cost of $300 million.

“As a hub country for the ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) Economic Community that was launched last year, Thailand is becoming the vehicle production base and the center of the consumer-electronics industry in Southeast Asia,” said Posco Chairman and CEO Kwon Oh-joon in his opening speech at the completion ceremony held in the Amata City Industrial Estate.

“With the newly completed plant, Posco will do the best to become a total solutions partner for Thailand with differentiated products and tailored solutions.”

Some 200 officials, including Thailand’s Deputy Prime Minister Tanasak Patimaptragorn, attended the ceremony and celebrated the plant’s completion.

All the automotive steel plates produced from Posco-TCS will be provided to global companies such as Nissan and Toyota in Thailand.

Thailand is the largest car-marking country in Southeast Asia, accounting for over half the market, with about 2 million vehicles a year. The market is projected to continue to expand as China is planning to establish vehicle-making facilities with a capacity of 200,000 cars in 2017. Japan, which occupies about 80 percent of the Thai vehicle market, also continues to expanding its vehicle business here.

Posco entered Thailand in 1998 with a processing plant of an annual capacity of 120,000 tons for consumer-electronics steel plates.

To better meet the demand and support the solutions marketing activities of Thai companies, the steelmaker built two additional processing plants, in 2006 and 2009, and established its overseas corporate Posco-SouthAsia in Bangkok in 2010.

In 2011, it also took over Thainox, Thailand’s only cold-rolled steel plate company, and supplied high quality products to Thailand and other Southeast Asian countries. Annually producing 220,000 tons of cold-rolled steel plates, Posco-Thainox became profitable in just three years.

Amid a drive to boost production and sales in the automotive steel plate market in Korea and abroad, Posco sold about 8.7 million tons of automotive steel plates last year, accounting for 10 percent of the total global need of automotive steel plates.

This makes up 25 percent of Posco’s total sales, the highest level among automotive steel plate-makers, which have kept to around 10 to 15 percent on average, the company said.

With the newly established automotive steel plate plant in Thailand, the Korean steelmaker aims to sell over 9 million tons of it this year and more than 10 million tons a year starting from 2018, it added.

By Lee Hyun-jeong /Korea Herald correspondent (rene@heraldcorp.com)