  We study a class of nonequilibrium lattice models on a ring where particles
hop in a particular direction, from a site to one of its (say, right) nearest
neighbours, with a rate that depends on the occupation of all the neighbouring
sites within a range R. This finite range process (FRP) for R=0 reduces to the
well known zero-range process (ZRP), giving rise to a factorized steady state
(FSS) for any arbitrary hop rate. We show that, provided the hop rates satisfy
a specific condition, the steady state of FRP can be written as a product of
cluster-weight function of (R+1) occupation variables. We show that, for a
large class of cluster-weight functions, the cluster-factorized steady state
admits a finite dimensional transfer-matrix formulation, which helps in
calculating the spatial correlation functions and subsystem mass distributions
exactly. We also discuss a criterion for which the FRP undergoes a condensation
transition.
