Hyundai Steel, POSCO Break Ground on $5.8B US Mill
Hyundai Steel and POSCO broke ground on a $5.8 billion electric-arc-furnace steel mill in Donaldsonville, Louisiana, on September 4, marking the first integrated automotive steel plant either company has built outside South Korea and the first greenfield steel mill of its kind constructed in the United States in six decades.
The plant, operated by joint-venture company Hyundai-POSCO Louisiana Steel LLC, sits on roughly 1,700 acres along the Mississippi River in Ascension Parish. Ownership is split among Hyundai Steel (50%), POSCO (20%), Hyundai Motor Company (15%) and Kia Corporation (15%), according to the companies' joint announcement. POSCO's $582 million stake was finalized in an SEC filing in December 2025, ahead of this week's groundbreaking.
What's being built
The mill will use electric-arc-furnace technology paired with a direct-reduction process, a route the companies say cuts carbon emissions by roughly 70% compared with traditional blast-furnace steelmaking. At full capacity, it is designed to produce 2.7 million metric tons of hot- and cold-rolled steel sheet a year -- about 1.8 million tons earmarked for automotive-grade steel and the remainder for other applications, according to Korea Herald's reporting on the project. Commercial production is targeted for 2029.
Why this matters
The plant is the steel-supply piece of a much larger commitment: Hyundai Motor Group pledged $21 billion in US investment in March 2025, later expanded to $26 billion through 2028, spanning vehicle assembly, batteries and now upstream steel. Once running, the mill will feed automotive-grade sheet directly to Hyundai's Montgomery, Alabama plant, Kia's West Point, Georgia plant, and the Hyundai Motor Group Metaplant in Savannah, Georgia -- all within roughly a day's truck haul of the Louisiana site. That shortens a supply chain that currently depends on steel shipped from Korea, and gives both automakers a hedge against US tariffs on imported automotive steel.
Global industry impact
For steelmakers and automakers elsewhere, the project is another data point in the broader shift of Asian steel capacity toward North America as producers respond to US tariff policy on imported steel. Hyundai Motor Group Executive Chair Euisun Chung called it "both our company's first integrated steel mill dedicated to automotive steel sheet and the first of its kind in America." Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry, who attended the ceremony alongside US Representatives Julia Letlow and Troy Carter and South Korea's Trade Minister Kim Jung-kwan, called it "the first greenfield steel mill built in America in the last 60 years" -- underscoring how rare new integrated steel capacity has become in the US even as automakers push suppliers to localize. The companies project the mill will create 1,300 direct jobs and support an estimated 4,100 indirect jobs in the region.
What to watch next
Construction now moves from ceremony to execution over roughly three years, with commercial output not expected before 2029 -- a long runway during which US trade policy on steel and automotive tariffs could still shift. Also worth tracking: whether Hyundai Steel or POSCO extend similar EAF investment to other US sites, and whether competing steelmakers serving other automakers respond with their own low-carbon, US-based automotive steel capacity.
Sources
PR Newswire (Hyundai Steel official release), Manufacturing Dive, and the Korea Herald.
