Momentum in Action: Hyundai Steel Building Louisiana’s Business Ecosystem

At Rene’s Industries, the scale of the work can be counted in truckloads. 

Since March, the family-owned company has moved more than 1 million tons of material into the Modeste area for Hyundai Steel and CF Industries — more than 50,000 truckloads in a matter of months. 

On any given day, Rene’s Industries can have as many as 150 trucks on the road, hauling pump sand and limestone to industrial projects across the region. Some belong to the company’s own fleet. Others are operated by subcontractors working alongside it. 

For Macy Rodrigue, who grew up around the business and now works alongside her father and other family members, the pace reflects something the company has spent decades preparing for. 

“For 40 years now, we’ve been servicing this industry,” Rodrigue said. “And finally, we feel like all of our investment, all of our hard work has paid off.”

Rene’s Industries has built its business between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, serving the plants and industrial sites that line the Mississippi River. Its terminal in Darrow allows the company to move material by barge, while its trucks deliver pump sand and limestone where they are needed. Those materials become foundations and heavy-haul roads, putting Rene’s Industries among the first companies on the ground as a new generation of industrial investment takes shape in Louisiana.

Now, some of that work is happening almost at its doorstep. 

Hyundai Steel marked a major milestone on Sept.  4 with a ceremonial groundbreaking for its planned $5.8 billion advanced manufacturing facility in Ascension Parish. The project is expected to create 1,300 direct new jobs, with commercial production targeted for 2029. 

But for businesses already serving Louisiana’s industrial corridor, the activity connected to the project began well before that ceremony. 

Built for What Comes Next

 Tamiko Stroud left Donaldsonville to build a career in higher education and state government. Hyundai-POSCO Louisiana Steel brought her back home. 

As the company’s external affairs specialist, Stroud now works at the intersection of the project and the businesses, workers and organizations around it. Much of that work involves helping people understand where they may fit into an investment of this scale. 

“The types of services that Hyundai looks for kind of changes every single day,” Stroud said. 

The opportunities can span everything from landscaping, catering and janitorial services to contractors, material suppliers and the broader network of businesses a project of this scale depends on. 

Louisiana companies are already capturing much of that work. About 70% of contracts connected to Hyundai Steel’s Louisiana project have gone to businesses in the state, creating work across the supplier network surrounding the investment. 

Source Louisiana, LED’s statewide supplier platform, gives major projects another way to connect with that network and now includes more than 3,500 registered Louisiana businesses.

Rodrigue sees room for that opportunity to reach businesses of all sizes that have been part of the region for generations.

“There are many other family-run businesses that have been around for generations,” she said. “And with this new opportunity, they also have the chance to grow, to pass it on.”

John Kocke is the fourth generation of one of them.

Kocke works at Elray Kocke Service Inc., the Donaldsonville company his great-grandfather founded in 1916. The company has grown into a supplier of ready-mix concrete, lumber and building materials for residential, commercial and industrial projects.

Now, Elray Kocke is preparing to help supply concrete for Hyundai Steel.

Elray Kocke joined with two other local concrete companies to form Legacy Concrete Alliance, combining their capacity to supply concrete at the scale Hyundai’s project requires. The group plans to install concrete plants on the Hyundai site as the work moves forward.

“Being located in this industrial corridor, we do many projects,” Kocke said. “We help these projects get started. We help build them, and then we service them for years and years.”

Elray Kocke has roughly 35 employees, and Kocke expects the company to continue growing. But for him, growth is not measured only in trucks, equipment or concrete.

“We can buy all the trucks and equipment we want to grow. But we can’t do that without good people,” he said. “We want to grow our people and have people that have careers here, not just jobs.”

Along the same industrial corridor Elray Kocke has served for decades, Hyundai is also driving new investment from global companies already established in Louisiana. Air Liquide, which has operated in the state for more than 60 years, is investing more than $350 million to expand industrial gas production and infrastructure, including a new air separation unit in St. James Parish and additional pipeline infrastructure along the Mississippi River. The expansion will supply the oxygen, nitrogen and argon needed for Hyundai-POSCO Louisiana Steel’s operations.

At Rene’s Industries, the growth around Hyundai is already shaping what comes next.

Rodrigue said the company is preparing to expand its fleet as demand grows. The impact reaches beyond the roughly 40 trucks the company owns. During a public hearing in September, Rodrigue said the Hyundai project was putting more than 75 of her co-workers to work each day, along with more than 150 subcontracted truckers, many of them local owner-operators. 

“When these large companies come into the community and they utilize the local businesses that are there, these businesses are able to grow, and then we give back as well,” she said. 

At Rene’s Industries, that has included donating a truck to River Parishes Community College (RPCC) to support commercial driver training. The company regularly hears from people interested in becoming truck drivers but unsure where they can train locally. The Hyundai-related work helped create room for Rene’s Industries to invest back into that pipeline, giving prospective drivers a path into the industry closer to home.

Opportunity Comes Home 

For Stroud, that connection between opportunity and local talent is personal. 

She grew up in Donaldsonville, attended local schools and was part of the first dual-enrollment class with River Parishes Community College. She later earned her bachelor’s degree in finance and a master’s degree in business administration from Southern University.

Returning to Donaldsonville with Hyundai-POSCO Louisiana Steel gave Stroud a role connecting her professional experience with the community where she grew up.

“I’m a direct representation of local talent being hired by Hyundai-POSCO Louisiana Steel,” Stroud said.

Her role now puts her in many of the conversations surrounding the project, helping connect Hyundai with businesses, workers and organizations across the region. That connection also extends to the next generation of workers. 

Stroud pointed to Hyundai’s work with River Parishes Community College and local schools, including a student ambassador enrolled in RPCC’s process technology program. 

“We’re looking for local talent in all aspects,” she said.

 For Kocke, the next generation is already part of the picture.

“The most rewarding thing is, I love what I do. I’ve been in it forever. I’m forever passionate about it,” he said. “When we see a project, or my kids see a project, they know we helped build that.”

For families whose businesses have grown alongside Louisiana’s industrial corridor, projects like Hyundai are creating new ways for that work to carry forward.

“We’ve been here for my whole life. I’ve always seen some changes, but never the momentum that we see now,” he said. “And we’re really moving in the right direction.”

Hyundai Steel will become another project tied to that legacy, but the work around it is already reaching well beyond one company. Louisiana businesses are expanding, longtime suppliers are investing, local companies are working together at a larger scale and new paths into the work are opening closer to home.