Hyundai Motor affiliate Kia Motors has announced that it expects to reach the 15 millionth cumulative export (from South Korea factories) milestone later this month.
This comes 40 years after its first export shipment of 10 Brisa pickup trucks to Qatar in 1975.
Go deeper with GlobalData
Discover B2B Marketing That Performs
Combine business intelligence and editorial excellence to reach engaged professionals across 36 leading media platforms.
Cumulatively to the end of May 2015 the B segment Rio was been the top export model for Kia with 2.23m vehicles shipped, while the Sportage compact SUV, A-segment Picanto and Sorento midsize SUV follow with 1.57m, 1.43m and 1.08m units respectively.
Of the exports, 6.03m vehicles have been shipped to North America, 3.35m to Europe – with 20% being imported into the UK- 2.52m to the Middle East & Africa, 1.71m to Central & South America (including the Caribbean) and 1.29m to Asia Pacific.
Following the 10m export milestone in March of 2011, it has taken Kia only four years and three months to hit 15m exports, which is one year and nine months less than it took the company to grow its export volume from 5m to 10m vehicles. Furthermore, while it took 30 years to surpass the 5m export mark, Kia will ship its 15millionth vehicle after only an additional 10 years.
Kia vehicles are currently manufactured at four plants in South Korea. The company has also expanded annual production capacity in Korea from 800,000 units in 2000 to 1.71m in 2014 with over 70% of domestic production exported.
This domestic production network is complemented by a growing overseas manufacturing presence for the Korean automaker which is currently operating five plants located in the US state of Georgia (Kia Motors Manufacturing Georgia), Slovakia (Kia Motors Slovakia) and China (Dongfeng Yueda Kia Motors). Its first plant in Mexico is under construction and will add another 300,000 units to annual global production capacity from mid-2016.
