Hyundai plans to build 300,000 cars this year at its plant in the Czech Republic and keep production at full capacity in the coming years.

The factory produced 303,035 vehicles in 2012, its first full year at capacity.

Spokesman Petr Vanek said the plan was to keep the plant at capacity in the future regardless of the situation in European markets as production is also exported to other countries, such as Australia and South Africa.

“Regarding the situation in the (European) car market, it can be expected that there will more likely be a recovery so we will start to return from markets outside of Europe, depending on how demand grows,” he said on Thursday.

Nearly all of Hyundai’s Czech production is exported. The plant opened in 2008 and builds the i30 compact car, ix35 compact SUV and ix20 subcompact minivan.

The Czech facility is one of three car plants in the country along with Volkswagen’s Czech unit Skoda and a joint venture between Toyota and PSA/Peugeot-Citroen.

The car industry association reported last month that Czech output rose by 50 percent year-on-year in August, helping to narrow a decline that has been hurting the country’s key business sector since last year.

The Czech economy moved out of recession in the second quarter, boosted by exports.