Nippon Steel Corp said Monday it will begin making hot-dip galvanized and galvannealed steel sheets in Thailand in 2013 for use in automobile manufacturing. To this end, the company will build a plant with an annual output capacity of 360,000 tons in the country’s Rayong province at a cost of some $300 million, or about 25 billion yen, with aim to tap into growing demand for high-grade automotive steel sheet, it said.

The major steelmaker will soon establish a wholly owned local subsidiary capitalized at $88 million, and employ the most advanced production equipment used at the company’s steelworks in Japan at the new factory, it said