Siting in the EEC: what order should you check things in?

01Get the order wrong and the whole projection gets redone

The most common opening move at a site-selection meeting is pulling up a few industrial estates and comparing land prices. Price is worth comparing, but it should not be the first step — because if the things that come before it are wrong, no amount of careful price comparison saves the decision.

Three things decide what you actually get: which route you take, what tier the activity category is graded at, and which class of plot the plant lands on. The three pull on each other — the route decides whether the plot needs to be on a list at all, the category and tier decide whether the add-on is open to you, and the plot class decides which form of location add-on you get. Picking the site first and fitting incentives on afterwards treats the last step as if it were the first.

02Land may matter more than the exemption

A foreign-owned company cannot in principle hold land. For manufacturing, the most realistic route is the land-holding privilege that the Investment Promotion Act gives a promoted company. But BOI's current list of promoted activities has closed that door for six metal, industrial chemical and plastic categories (for applications submitted after the new rule takes effect), leaving an exception only for established investors who meet a test of several past promoted projects plus a cumulative investment threshold.

Those categories happen to cover a great many of the auto-parts and metalworking projects coming to Thailand. Falling inside the restriction does not mean you cannot buy land at all — holding land inside an industrial estate under the Industrial Estate Authority of Thailand Act is a separate, independent legal basis, and a large share of the plots inside EEC promotional zones are industrial estates anyway. Check both when siting. This route needs to be verified against the text of the law and the position of the competent authority. See how the same restriction plays out for foreign land ownership more broadly.

03Put the wage ledger and the tax ledger on the same map

All three provinces sit in the highest band of Thailand's minimum daily wage. Where the incentives are most concentrated, labour cost is high too — a projection that counts the exemption but not the wage bill is skewed, especially for labour-intensive lines. See how hiring cost and severance work for the wage side of that ledger.

04Infrastructure target years are planning targets, not fixed dates

The high-speed rail linking three airports, U-Tapao International Airport, Laem Chabang port phase 3 and Map Ta Phut industrial port phase 3 each have an official target operating year. They are worth writing into the projection as upside, but should not be treated as a fixed commitment when you schedule capacity ramp-up.

05A checklist that works

• Fix the route: EECO, or BOI with EECO as a fallback.
• Grade the activity category and target tier, and confirm whether the add-on is open to you and whether you can commit to it.
• Check the plot's status: is it on the current promotional zone list, which class does it belong to, and does the land-holding restriction reach you.
• Put land, wages and timeline on the same page as the tax numbers, then compare estates.

All of this turns on the announcements in force at the time of filing and needs to be verified item by item against what the business actually does.