Since April, the manganese and silicon market as a whole has shown a strong trend, and has risen by more than 26% so far.
One of the drivers behind the overall rally in the market came from Australian mining giant South32, which revealed in its Q1 2024 report that its critical infrastructure on Groot Island was severely damaged due to the impact of Tropical Cyclone Megan on March 16-17, resulting in the suspension of its GEMCO manganese mine operations. South32 expects terminal operations and manganese ore export operations to return to normal until the first quarter of 2025.
The disruption to South32's operations is expected to reduce the global supply of manganese ore by more than 10% in 2024, while also meaning that domestic manganese ore imports will be reduced by about 300,000 tonnes per month. Affected by supply disruptions, the price of domestic imported manganese ore has risen sharply. The rise in the price of manganese ore has directly pushed up the production cost of manganese.
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Manganese metal industry chain combing
The manganese industry chain includes manganese ore mining in the upstream, smelting and processing in the midstream, and the application of manganese products in the downstream.
Manganese ore resources are widely distributed in the world, manganese is mainly distributed in countries such as South Africa, Ukraine and Australia, and the continent accounts for about 7% of the global manganese ore resources.
The manganese ore resources in mainland China are mainly concentrated in Guangxi, Hunan, Yunnan and Guizhou, and the total manganese ore reserves account for 77.2% of the national total.
The manganese ore in the mainland is mainly manganese carbonate ore, which is characterized by a relatively large proportion of poor ore and relatively few high-quality manganese ore.
In addition, manganese mining in mainland China is more complex, and the scale of mines is generally small and scattered. These factors lead to the need for the mainland to import a large amount of manganese ore from abroad every year.
In terms of upstream manganese resource exploitation, the main domestic manufacturers include Western Gold, Minmetals Development, Huayang Co., Ltd., CITIC Metal and Southern Manganese Industry, while the Guizhou Tianzhuhe Mining Area, a subsidiary of Red Star Development, is the largest mining area in China.
Manganese industry chain diagram:
The utilization of manganese ore is mainly applied to metallurgical manganese and chemical manganese through chemical and metallurgical methods.
Among the midstream smelting and processing layout manufacturers, Tianyuan Manganese, Southern Manganese, Sanhe Manganese, Damanganese and Dongfang Mining are the main players.
The main application areas of manganese are concentrated in the steel industry, where more than 90% of manganese is used in the production of silicon-manganese alloys and manganese-iron alloys.
The remaining manganese ore is mainly used for the production of electrolytic manganese dioxide, manganese sulfate and other chemical products, and is used as an important raw material for downstream industries such as lithium-ion batteries.
Manganese is widely used in the production of ternary cathode materials for lithium batteries, lithium manganese oxide cathode materials, etc.
Domestic manganese demand is concentrated in manganese ferroalloys and electrolytic manganese:
Source: Xingxingcha
There are many types of manganese-based ferroalloys, including high-carbon ferromanganese, medium-carbon ferromanganese, low-carbon ferromanganese, and manganese-silicon alloys.
In the steelmaking process, high-carbon ferromanganese and manganese-silicon alloys are often used as deoxidizers, desulfurizers and alloy additives to improve steel quality. Medium carbon ferromanganese and low-carbon ferromanganese are mainly used in the production of special steel and welding electrodes.
Among them, the manufacturers of manganese silicon layout include Inner Mongolia Puyuan Ferroalloy, Ordos, Henan Stellar Metallurgical Materials, etc.
The application of downstream manganese products mainly includes Baotou Iron and Steel Co., Ltd., Baosteel Co., Ltd., Shandong Iron and Steel Co., Ltd., Changhong Energy, etc.
In addition, high-purity manganese sulfate plays a key role in the preparation of precursors for ternary cathode materials and lithium manganese oxide cathode materials.
The main domestic manganese sulfate layout enterprises include Yunnan Yuxi Huilong, Yuanyuan New Materials, Binbin Battery Materials, Best Battery Materials and other manufacturers. #有色金属##锰##新能源汽车##固态电池##锂电池##钢铁##财经##矿#
In the field of manganese-based cathode materials, lithium manganese oxide and lithium nickel cobalt manganese oxide have been industrialized.
Lithium manganese iron phosphate successfully makes up for the shortcomings of lithium iron phosphate and ternary materials, so it is regarded as a strong substitute for lithium iron phosphate and ternary 5 series.
In addition, with the rapid development of solid-state batteries, the ultra-high specific capacity of lithium-rich manganese genes has attracted much attention, and manganese-based cathode materials are expected to become the ultimate route for solid-state batteries.
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