Samut Prakan
Bangkok's industrial exoskeleton—Suvarnabhumi (62M passengers/year, 113 airlines), Nissan 295K vehicles/year, Araya Industrial Estate 30% filled by mid-2025.
Samut Prakan is Bangkok's industrial exoskeleton—the manufacturing capacity that surrounds and serves the service-focused capital. Suvarnabhumi Airport covers 3,520 hectares here, handling 62.2 million passengers in 2024 (the world's 20th busiest), served by 113 airlines. What lands at Samut Prakan feeds Bangkok; what Bangkok exports leaves through Samut Prakan.
The eastern province is factory floor. Nissan operates two plants employing 4,000 workers with 295,000 vehicle annual capacity. Over 800 factories produce electronics, semiconductors, automotive parts, and computer components. Araya Industrial Estate, launched February 2025, filled 30% of its 736 hectares faster than expected—Frasers Property reports demand outpacing projections. The location sells itself: Motorway 7 connects Suvarnabhumi to the Eastern Economic Corridor and Laem Chabang Port.
The western side tells the older story: rice paddies, shrimp farms, and mangrove forests that predate industrialization. Samut Prakan straddles the Chao Phraya's final kilometers before the Gulf of Thailand—land that was delta before it was district, agricultural before it was industrial, local before it was global. BOI tax breaks now incentivize high-tech and green industries, attempting to position Thailand 4.0's ambitions onto land that once grew nothing but rice and shrimp.