Koh Tao industrial & warehouse market: Mae Haad freight, dive-support yards & construction supply

What "industrial" means on a scuba-diving island

Every mainland industrial corridor covered elsewhere on BAANLYY — Bangkok's Bang Na/Samut Prakan belt, the Pattaya/Laem Chabang/Chonburi corridor, Rayong's Map Ta Phut and Eastern Seaboard, Chiang Mai's Lamphun estate — has some combination of an IEAT-licensed estate, BOI-promoted manufacturing, or EEC infrastructure behind it. Koh Tao has none of that, and like its neighbors Koh Phangan and Koh Samui, it has no industrial estate of its own. Koh Tao's economy is built almost entirely around scuba diving — the island is one of the world's highest-volume PADI open-water certification centers, with Sairee Beach's dense dive-shop strip, Mae Haad's pier-side resorts and Chalok Baan Kao's quieter dive centers driving nearly everything the island builds, imports and staffs for. That's not a coverage gap, it's an honest structural fact about the island, and it shapes everything else on this page.

The real supply chain: Mae Haad and a total absence of air cargo

• Chumphon to Mae Haad — the shortest, closest crossing — Koh Tao has never had an airport, so every arrival and most freight routes through Chumphon first. The overnight Songserm car ferry between Chumphon and Mae Haad pier (roughly six hours) is the vehicle-and-cargo-capable route the island's supply chain leans on most for building materials, beverage stock and general freight, while faster Lomprayah and Seatran catamarans cover the same crossing in about 1.5-2 hours but carry passengers and light parcels, not trucks.
• Koh Samui (USM) and Surat Thani (URT) as secondary gateways — travelers and lighter cargo also reach Koh Tao via Samui International Airport and a Maenam/Bophut pier ferry connection, or via Surat Thani's budget-carrier airport and a longer bus-and-ferry combination, as covered on our airport transfer guide. Neither route changes the fundamental picture: everything finishes on a boat into Mae Haad.
• Inter-island ferries link the dive-island chain — Lomprayah, Seatran and Songserm all also run the Koh Tao-Koh Phangan-Koh Samui corridor, meaning much of Koh Tao's retail and F&B stock is trans-shipped through those islands' piers rather than arriving directly from the mainland.
• No bridge, no rail, no deep-sea port — unlike Chonburi's Laem Chabang or Rayong's Map Ta Phut, there is nothing resembling container-port infrastructure here; freight cost and lead time are governed by ferry schedules, vehicle-deck capacity and Gulf weather rather than expressway access or berth availability.

Where dive-support & light-industrial activity actually clusters

• Dive-tank filling & compressor stations — a genuinely Koh Tao-specific category: with hundreds of daily dive trips departing the island, compressor and tank-filling yards serving PADI, SSI and technical dive operators are a real and recurring light-industrial use, concentrated near Mae Haad and Sairee Beach.
• Dive-boat & longtail-boat maintenance and storage yards — servicing the dive boats, speedboats and longtails that move divers and cargo around the island daily, typically small owner-operated yards rather than institutional marine facilities.
• F&B and beverage distribution warehouses — supplying the bars, restaurants and dive resorts clustered around Mae Haad, Sairee Beach and Chalok Baan Kao, generally leased on short, informal terms rather than institutional Grade A leases.
• Building-materials and contractor yards — serving the island's steady dive-resort and guesthouse construction pipeline, generally sited inland from Mae Haad rather than on coastal land reserved for tourism use.
• Self-storage & small distribution units — increasingly used by long-stay dive instructors, resort operators and small businesses; see our Koh Tao self-storage guide for the residential-facing side of this market.

None of this resembles the Grade A ready-built or build-to-suit logistics parks covered on the national industrial overview — it's a small, owner-operator-driven market shaped entirely by what a dive-tourism island actually needs to keep running.

Rent, lease terms & typical costs

Formal market data for Koh Tao industrial and warehouse space is very thin — thinner even than Koh Phangan's — and that itself is informative — this is not a market tracked by the international brokerages (CBRE, JLL, Colliers, Knight Frank) the way Bangkok, Pattaya or the EEC are. As a general pattern rather than a quote: yard, workshop and small warehouse space tends to lease on shorter, often informal or renewable annual terms rather than the 10+ year build-to-suit commitments seen in mainland logistics parks, reflecting the small scale of tenants and the absence of institutional landlords. Deposit plus advance rent at signing is standard, consistent with commercial leasing norms elsewhere in Thailand. For any specific site, work directly with a local commercial agent rather than relying on published rent benchmarks, since so little of this market is publicly quoted.

Foreign ownership — no IEAT/BOI shortcut here

Because Koh Tao has no licensed IEAT estate and no BOI-promoted industrial activity, the freehold land-ownership route available to foreign manufacturers inside mainland industrial estates simply doesn't apply here. Standard national rules govern instead: a foreign individual generally cannot hold freehold title to land, and a foreign-owned company is capped at 49% Thai shareholding to purchase land directly. In practice, foreign operators of dive-support yards, warehouses or logistics space on Koh Tao typically use a long-term registered lease (commonly up to 30 years, renewable by agreement) or a majority Thai-owned company structure, with buildings and structures on the land often held separately from the land itself. Have a Thai-qualified property lawyer review any lease or company structure before signing — the Department of Lands and Department of Business Development are the relevant registries for land and company matters respectively. Full detail on national foreign-ownership mechanics is covered on our foreign ownership rules page.

Frequently asked

Sources & References

• Thailand Board of Investment (BOI)
• Department of Business Development (DBD)
• Department of Lands, Thailand

Primary and official sources are cited above. Government rules, fees and procedures in Thailand change over time and vary by office; always confirm current requirements with the relevant authority before relying on them. BAANLYY never takes paid placement in editorial content.