Chinese bus maker BONLUCK will deliver 500 new energy buses to Thailand by the end of this year.

The gas buses were ordered by a Bangkok bus company in a 50-million dollar deal signed in 2014, said Li Han, vice general manager of CHTC BONLUCK BUS Co., Ltd.

The buses are designed to carry a maximum of 100 passengers each, Li said.

The Jiangxi-based company has been exploiting new markets outside China, Li said. It signed a deal to export 100 buses to Turkmenistan in Central Asian earlier this year.

"We're a beneficiary of the Road and Belt Initiative," Li said, adding that the countries along the Silk Road have become a new focus of the company's overseas expansion.

Proposed by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2013, the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road center around overland and maritime trade routes that once linked China with the rest of Asia and Europe.