South Korea’s No. 2 automaker Kia Motors Corp. surpassed its larger sister company Hyundai Motor Co. in auto exports for the first time in the first seven months of this year, industry data showed Sunday.

Kia Motors exported 772,559 vehicles in the January-July period, outstripping Hyundai Motor’s shipments of 722,129 units, according to the data by the Korea Automobile Manufacturers Association.

GM Korea Co., the South Korean unit of U.S. automaker General Motors Co., was a distant third with exports of 291,199 vehicles during the seven-month period, followed by Ssangyong Motor Co., the local unit of Indian sport utility vehicle maker Mahindra & Mahindra, with 46,363 units and Renault Samsung Motors Co. with 32,092 units.

It was the first time for Kia Motors to capture the top spot in cumulative vehicle exports since 1994, when KAMA began compiling related data.

Industry leader Hyundai Motor had been the top auto exporter except for 1998, when GM Korea’s predecessor, GM Daewoo, captured the title.

In the January-July period, Kia Motors’ exports grew 14.3 percent from a year earlier, also far exceeding Hyundai Motor’s growth rate of 4.8 percent, according to the data. The annualized growth rate of overseas shipments by the five automakers in South Korea averaged 2.7 percent.

Kia Motors’ stellar export performance was attributed mainly to the increased capacity of its plant in Gwangju, a city about 330 kilometers south of Seoul.

In the second half of last year, Kia Motors raised the plant’s annual capacity to 620,000 units from the previous 500,000.

According to KAMA, South Korea’s overall auto exports reached $74.7 billion in 2013, with imports coming to $11.2 billion. (Yonhap)