Manufacturing is where BOI started, and it’s still where the incentives run deepest. When you make physical products, you import machinery, you buy raw materials to turn into finished goods, and you need land to put a factory on. Each of those is a real cost, and a BOI promotion is aimed squarely at all three.
Most of what a promotion gives you, like the corporate tax holiday and the capital rules, works the same whether you make car parts or run a software team, and we cover those in their own guides. This page sticks to what’s specific to a factory: the duty savings on machinery and materials, owning your land, bringing in foreign engineers, and the one staffing rule that catches bigger plants off guard.
Key Takeaways
- Manufacturing is where BOI’s import duty exemptions matter most: no duty on the machinery you bring in, and no duty on the raw and essential materials you turn into product.
- Duty-exempt machinery has to be imported within 30 months of your certificate being issued, so timing your shipments matters.
- A BOI-promoted manufacturer can own the land its factory sits on, which an ordinary foreign-held Thai company can’t do.
- Factories with more than 100 staff have to keep at least 70% Thai employees to bring foreign personnel in under BOI, plus meet minimum expat salary tiers. Smaller factories are exempt from that rule.
- Your tax holiday runs from 3 to 13 years depending on your activity group, and manufacturing with real processing tends to sit higher up that scale.
Which Manufacturing Activities Qualify
The promoted-activity list is broad on the manufacturing side. It spans food and agricultural processing, medical products, machinery and automation, automotive and electric vehicles, electrical and electronics, metals, plastics, chemicals, textiles, and more. If you’re making a physical product with any real processing involved, there’s a good chance an activity on the list covers it.
What you can’t do is read your incentives off the sector name. BOI sorts every activity into its own group, and two factories making broadly similar things can land in different groups depending on how much the process adds to the product. Matching your specific product to the right activity is the single most important thing to get right before you apply, because it drives the whole value of the promotion. The full picture lives in our guide to which businesses qualify.
Import Duty on Machinery and Materials
This is the benefit that makes manufacturing different. A service business imports neither production machinery nor raw materials, so for a factory the duty exemptions are often worth more than the tax holiday over the life of the project. There are two separate exemptions, and a factory usually gets both.
Machinery
BOI can exempt or reduce the import duty on the machinery you bring in to run the promoted activity. For a factory kitting out an entire production line with imported equipment, this is usually the first big saving to land.
It comes with a deadline that catches people out: duty-exempt machinery has to be imported within 30 months of your promotion certificate being issued. Clearance runs through BOI’s eMT system, and the window can be extended if your build-out takes longer, but plan your shipping schedule around that 30 months rather than the other way around.
Raw and essential materials
Separately, BOI can exempt the duty on the raw and essential materials that go into your product. There are two tracks: one for materials used in production generally, and a specific one for materials used to make goods you’re exporting. For an export-focused factory buying inputs from overseas and shipping finished product back out, this exemption runs for the life of the production and often adds up to more, cumulatively, than the machinery break.
We cover the mechanics of both exemptions, including how the eMT system and the export track work, in our full guide to BOI import duty exemptions.
Owning Your Factory Land
A factory needs a plot, and ordinary foreign-majority companies in Thailand can’t own land. BOI promotion carries a permission to own the land your activity needs in the company’s name, so you can hold the ground your factory sits on instead of leasing it or reaching for a workaround. For a business planning to be in one place for a decade or more, that’s a structural advantage.
One condition to keep in mind: the permission is tied to the promoted activity. If the activity ends, you have to dispose of the land within a year. As long as you’re operating, it’s yours to hold.
Bringing in Foreign Staff
Manufacturing often needs foreign engineers, technical specialists, or plant managers, at least while the operation is finding its feet. BOI lets you bring them in through the Board’s own process rather than the standard immigration ratio that would otherwise force you to hire four Thai employees for every foreigner. For a factory in its early years, that’s a major unlock.
A rule that came into force in 2025 changed the deal for larger plants, though, and it’s the one thing on this page most likely to surprise you if you’re planning a sizeable operation.
The 70% Thai-staff rule (Por.8/2568): a manufacturing project with more than 100 total staff must maintain at least 70% Thai employees to bring foreign personnel in under the BOI skilled-worker route. Expats also have to meet minimum monthly salary tiers: Executive roles at least THB150,000, Management at least THB75,000 (or THB50,000 with a bachelor’s degree or higher), and Operation roles at least THB50,000. Services and manufacturing projects with 100 or fewer staff are exempt from the 70% threshold. It took effect on 1 October 2025 for certificates issued from the announcement date, and 1 January 2026 for certificates already in place.
The practical effect is simple. If you’re building a factory that will grow past 100 people, your foreign hiring is capped at 30% of headcount and your expat pay has to clear those floors, so plan your staffing model with that in mind from the start. Stay under 100 and none of it applies.
The Tax Holiday, Briefly
Every promoted business also gets the headline benefit: instead of paying Thailand’s standard 20% corporate income tax on the profit from your promoted activity, you pay nothing for a set number of years.
How many depends on your activity group, from 3 years at the low end up to 13 for the highest-priority activities. And manufacturing businesses generally sit near the top of the scale.
Even a Group B manufacturer with no tax holiday at all keeps the duty exemptions and the land and staffing permissions, which for a factory can justify the promotion on their own. The full group-by-group breakdown and the merit-based add-ons sit in our incentives guide.
What It Takes to Qualify
The baseline conditions are more modest than most people expect, given the size of the benefits. The minimum investment is THB1,000,000 per project, not counting land or working capital; your debt-to-equity ratio has to be no worse than 3:1; and you only need a feasibility study once the project goes above THB2,000,000,000, which most factories sit well under.
The THB1,000,000 figure surprises people, because it’s low for what’s on offer. The catch is that it’s a floor, not a target: your actual investment has to be credible for the factory you’re proposing, and BOI will look at whether the numbers make sense.
Our minimum capital guide goes deeper on how this is calculated and where higher activity-specific thresholds kick in.
How to Apply
The path to a promotion certificate is the same for manufacturing as for any other activity:
- you match your product to the right activity and group
- submit the application with your project details
- attend a clarification meeting with a BOI officer
- once approved, accept the promotion and apply for your certificate.
Two things are worth front-loading when there’s a physical plant involved. Get the activity-to-group mapping right, because it decides whether you’re looking at 3 tax-free years or 13. And build a realistic machinery timeline, since that 30-month import window starts ticking from certificate issuance and your equipment is exactly what the exemption is for.
The full sequence, timelines, and document list are in our application process guide.
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