An aerobic, Gram-stain-positive, motile, coccus-shaped actinobacterium, designated strain L2-1-L1T, was isolated from mangrove sediment in Thailand. The organism was deep orange, oxidase-negative and catalase-positive. Growth occurred at temperatures between 17 and 32 °C and with NaCl concentrations up to 10 %. Chemotaxonomic characteristics of strain L2-1-L1T were typical of the genus Kineococcus. The diagnostic diamino acid of the peptidoglycan was meso-diaminopimelic acid. Whole-cell hydrolysates contained arabinose, galactose, glucose, mannose and ribose. The menaquinone was MK-9(H2). Mycolic acids were not detected. Anteiso-C15 : 0 and iso-C14 : 0 were detected as the major cellular fatty acids. The major polar lipids comprised diphosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylglycerol and an unidentified phosphoglycolipid. The G+C content of the DNA was 74.7 mol%. A phylogenetic tree, based on 16S rRNA gene sequences, revealed that strain L2-1-L1T represents a novel member of the genus Kineococcus. The most closely related species were Kineococcus endophytica KLBMP 1274T, Kineococcus aurantiacus NBRC 15268T and Kineococcus rhizosphaerae RP-B16T, with 98.9, 98.6 and 98.5 % 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity, respectively. On the basis of phylogenetic analysis, DNA-DNA relatedness data, phenotypic characteristics and chemotaxonomic data, a novel species of the genus Kineococcus is proposed: Kineococcus magrovi sp. nov. The type strain is strain L2-1-L1T ( = BCC 75409T = NBRC 110933T).