Posted on August 25, 2025
The $5.8 billion Hyundai Steel plant that’s set to rise in Ascension Parish is a key project for Gov. Jeff Landry’s administration. And to make it work, Hyundai and state officials have long known they would need a new port facility to bring raw materials in and send finished goods out to the Korean automaker’s assembly plants.
The answer to that logistics problem came last month, when the Port of South Louisiana was tapped to build and operate a new $25.5 million deepwater dock. The project, however, is on land controlled by the Port of Baton Rouge, which in years past may have raised thorny questions of control and oversight that could’ve turned into a political brawl.
But under the newly established Louisiana Ports and Waterways Investment Commission, which has been tasked with directing public funds to important economic development projects, the ports hashed out an agreement.
“What made the deal between Port of South Louisiana and Baton Rouge that much easier to accomplish is that the ports have been meeting regularly since late 2023,” said Joe Toomy, the shipping industry executive and former chair of the Port of New Orleans, who has been overseeing the Waterways Commission’s efforts.
Bringing the ports together
If the Hyundai dock project is successfully funded and built, it would represent the first tangible result of Landry’s plan to reshape the state’s port system. The strategy, which looks to increase and focus public port investment and cooperation, is also aiming to curb the decades of parochial squabbling that critics say has contributed to the state’s loss of market share to Gulf Coast rivals.
The five Louisiana ports along the lower Mississippi River — The Port of Baton Rouge, Port of South Louisiana, Port of New Orleans and the ports in Plaquemines and St. Bernard parishes — collectively move over a half-billion tons annually, accounting for nearly 20% of all U.S. cargo volumes and more than twice as much as nearest rival Houston.
The problem, according to many shipping industry players and state economy boosters, is that for all their industrial might, they’ve never worked well together. Each is overseen by its own board and represents the interests of the parishes where it has jurisdiction. That has meant that while container shipping has come to dominate trade, the state has fallen behind and it has cost other potential investments too, like manufacturing and distribution centers. That’s starting to change, according to port officials.
The Ascension Parish dock investment would be part of approximately $600 million of proposed spending on infrastructure and other support efforts for the Korean industrial conglomerate’s project, which was announced earlier this year for the Riverplex Megapark on the west bank of the Mississippi River.
The facility will be in the jurisdiction of the Port of Baton Rouge though it has ceded the project, via a cooperative endeavor agreement, to the Port of South Louisiana, whose territory covers a 54-mile stretch along the Mississippi River, from Waggaman in Jefferson Parish to Convent in St. James Parish.
The Port of South Louisiana has long planned to establish operations on the west bank as part of its development strategy. However, last year it abandoned a bid to buy Avondale Global Gateway — which is in the Port of New Orleans jurisdiction — after widespread opposition to the deal from state politicians and the shipping industry.
A new commission
The uproar over that proposed deal helped spur renewed talk about the need for a statewide ports plan. That in turn led to the establishment by the Landry administration of the Waterways Investment Commission, via a bill sponsored by Republican state representative Mark Wright of St. Tammany Parish, which has been tasked with setting overall strategy and helping to direct state and other funds toward priority projects.
Micah Cormier, Port of South Louisiana’s chief commercial officer, said the Hyundai dock would give the port the west bank foothold it had been looking for. It could allow them to replicate there its east bank Globalplex multimodal warehousing and manufacturing center as suppliers built to be near Hyundai.
“This could be a catalyst,” Cormier said. “We have had a tremendous amount of interest since we’ve been looking at building on the west bank.”
At its last meeting in July, the commission identified the Port of South Louisiana’s Hyundai dock — dubbed “Project Huey” — as one of seven priority port projects which would require various levels of state and other public funding.
Julia Fisher-Cormier, Landry’s Commissioner of Multimodal Commerce and vice chair of the Waterways Commission, said the July resolution should be seen as one of several efforts aimed at making sure the state’s ports are helping to accomplish the administration’s broader economic development goals.
Louisiana has 41 ports of various sizes that together support one in five jobs and contribute about 5% of the state’s budget. However, despite the industry’s importance, critics have said the lack of a state-level strategy has meant that it has lost ground in recent decades, especially on the all-important container ship market, to Houston and Mobile.
Representatives from Hyundai Steel Louisiana stand up and receive a round of applause from the full audience after being recognized by Gov. Jeff Landry during the Donaldsonville Chamber of Commerce meeting at the Lemann Center on Wednesday, August 20, 2025.
In their resolution, the commission noted that the Port Priority Program, which was established in 1989, is the only program currently available to fund port projects.
To date, it has provided less than $1 billion in total funding — less than $28 million a year, on average — for port infrastructure and dredging projects across all of Louisiana’s ports.
“Other Gulf states provide their ports with over $250 million annually for port infrastructure and waterways dredging projects in order to attract businesses and investment to their states, and to facilitate growth in international trade,” the commission noted.
LIT and other projects
Top of the commissions priority list is the Louisiana International Terminal the Port of New Orleans proposes building at Violet, in St. Bernard Parish. Though it still faces opposition from St. Bernard Parish Council and a large section of the local population, Landry made it clear in May that he backs the project when he appointed Michael Hecht, CEO of GNO Inc., the regional economic development agency, to push the project through.
It is expected to begin construction this year if it gets the green light from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, with phase one coming online in 2028.
The project priority list also includes the $95 million Fourchon Island Connectivity and Resiliency Project to build a new Fourchon Bridge and access road, which local officials say are needed to develop Fourchon Island in support of deepwater rig repair and other oil services work.
Also included on the list is the $70 million Port of Terrebonne project to deepen the Houma Navigation Canal for oil related traffic, and the $20 million worth of enhancements at the Central Louisiana Regional Port in support of Fort Polk activities.
Toomy said the most significant progress is on the Big Five deepwater river ports. In an interview, he pointed to their recent agreement to fund a study into how best they could jointly market themselves to world.
Polaris Analytics & Consulting has been commissioned to come up with a marketing strategy that will sell the ports’ collective strengths, both in terms of the commodities and containers it can move as well as how they can offer a base for manufacturing and logistics.
The aim is to turn the tide for the region and attract investment and jobs, like Mobile has done with its nearby Hyundai and Mercedes-Benz plants, as well as the big Walmart distribution center there.
There are still some wrinkles. Plaquemines Port — now called Louisiana Gateway Port — is still pursuing its plan for a west bank container terminal, which would be built and operated by APM, though Port of New Orleans opposes it.
Charles Tillotson, Gateway’s CEO, said that the privately funded project doesn’t conflict with the Louisiana International Terminal and should benefit from the five ports’ joint marketing plan.
“This initiative gives us a broader platform to highlight the strategic value of our terminal within a regional framework,” he said.
