Manganese

Battery-Grade HPMSM: China Controls 85–95% of the World's High-Purity Manganese Refining

What HPMSM is and why it differs from bulk ferroalloy manganese

HPMSM (MnSO₄·H₂O) is the battery industry's actual feedstock — a pale-pink crystalline salt, typically ≥99.95% pure with single-digit parts-per-million ceilings on iron, copper, nickel, and lead, that is fed directly into precursor cathode active material (pCAM) production for nickel-manganese-cobalt (NMC) and lithium-manganese-iron-phosphate (LMFP) chemistries (USITC Executive Briefing). It bears little resemblance to the bulk ferroalloy market: production runs through acid leaching, multi-stage impurity precipitation, and controlled crystallization, and requires manganese carbonate-type ore — only an estimated 2% of global manganese resources — as the preferred feedstock because the manganese is already present in a soluble divalent form.

The wider byproduct chemistry chain: EMM and EMD alongside HPMSM

HPMSM is one of three major manganese chemical intermediates, and the distinction matters for understanding where China's dominance is structural versus contestable. Electrolytic manganese metal (EMM), typically 99.7–99.9% pure flake or briquette, is produced by dissolving manganese ore in sulfuric acid to form manganese sulphate, purifying the solution, and electroplating manganese onto cathodes — the same core hydrometallurgical process used for HPMSM, differing mainly in the final crystallization versus electrodeposition step. China's EMM capacity exceeds 1.5 million tonnes per year and accounts for roughly 95–98% of world production, concentrated in Guangxi, Chongqing, Guizhou, and Ningxia — a region industry participants call the “manganese triangle” (Journal of Environmental Management, manganese electrolytic process review, 2024; USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2025 — Manganese). Ningxia Tianyuan Manganese is the world's single largest EMM producer, with roughly 200,000 t/yr of capacity, while CITIC Dameng operates a vertically integrated mine-to-metal chain (USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2025 — Manganese). EMM feeds specialty steel and aluminum alloying, as well as some battery and electronics uses, but its own production generates a serious environmental liability: China has accumulated more than 160 million tonnes of electrolytic manganese residue (EMR) waste, with over 10 million tonnes added annually, requiring dedicated management under China's hazardous-waste and tailings regulations (Journal of Hazardous Materials, EMR review, 2021).

Electrolytic manganese dioxide (EMD) is the older, more established battery chemical — the black cathode powder used almost exclusively in dry-cell alkaline, zinc-carbon, and some lithium primary batteries, produced by anodic electrodeposition from purified manganese sulphate solution (USITC Publication 5069, Electrolytic Manganese Dioxide from China). China produced an estimated 14,900 tonnes of EMD in July 2024 alone across LMO, alkaline, and carbon-zinc grades, and remains the dominant global exporter, with over 90% of world EMD export volume (Shanghai Metals Market, EMD production data, Aug 2024; Strategic Market Research, EMD market report). A 2020 U.S. International Trade Commission antidumping review found the U.S. EMD market consisted of “very few suppliers and purchasers,” with virtually all domestic and imported product going into alkaline battery production, and noted rising Chinese EMD consumption for NMC batteries even as legacy alkaline demand has migrated toward Asia (USITC Publication 5069). Vibrantz operates dedicated EMD production in both the U.S. and China, making it one of the few non-Chinese commercial EMD suppliers of scale (Vibrantz, alkaline battery materials).

China's HPMSM production geography: Guangxi, Guizhou, Ningxia, and Hunan

Battery-grade sulphate production capacity is not spread evenly across China: the Manganese Metal Trade Association (MMTA) locates most existing HPMSM plants in the southern provinces of Guangxi and Guizhou, with new projects specifically in Ningxia and Hunan provinces expected to add capacity over the short-to-medium term (MMTA, Battery Demand Reshaping the Manganese Market, Apr 2024). Guizhou Manganese Mineral Group's Tongren facility illustrates the integration model: its first construction phase alone targeted 300,000 tonnes per year of high-purity manganese sulphate and 16,500 tonnes per year of EMD, using combined heat and power generation to supply both its own processing lines and neighbouring industrial-park tenants (China Daily, Guizhou Manganese Mineral Group, Dec 2022).

Demand trajectory: from under 1% of manganese use to a projected 5–8% by 2030

The International Energy Agency's Global Critical Minerals Outlook 2025 identifies battery-grade manganese sulphate as one of two emerging supply-chain “choke points” alongside purified phosphoric acid, stating that China supplies 95% of the world's high-purity manganese sulphate and warning that “high purity manganese sulphate supplies from announced projects meet only 55% of expected 2035 demand under today's policy settings.” The IEA also notes that manganese demand is unusual among battery metals: while lithium, nickel, cobalt, and graphite prices fell sharply in 2024 on oversupply, manganese prices rose in the second half of 2024 due to Australian and Gabonese supply disruptions colliding with growing demand (IEA Global Critical Minerals Outlook 2025).

The starting base is small: the Manganese Metal Trade Association estimates less than 1% of the roughly 20-million-tonne annual manganese market currently goes into batteries, with the rest absorbed by steel. But MMTA's analysis, citing Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, projects HPMSM demand in 2030 could reach 3.5 times 2023 levels in its base case, or as much as 5.9 times 2023 levels if cell-makers adopt higher-manganese-intensity chemistries such as LMFP at scale — with passenger EVs expected to drive roughly 80% of the incremental demand (MMTA, Battery Demand Reshaping the Manganese Market, Apr 2024). Even under the high-growth scenario, battery demand would still represent only a mid-single-digit share of total manganese consumption by 2030, given the sheer scale of the steel market described in Section 3 — but that share is heavily concentrated in the tightest part of the supply chain, HPMSM refining, which is why it commands outsized strategic attention relative to its tonnage.

The cathode chemistries pulling manganese into batteries

Demand growth is being driven by a structural cathode shift. Manganese is the active stabilizer in LMFP cathodes — deployed in six commercial EV models in China during 2024 — and in emerging manganese-rich NMC and high-voltage LNMO chemistries; Umicore has targeted commercial production of manganese-rich cathodes for EVs by 2026 (IEA Global Critical Minerals Outlook 2025). Separately, industry estimates put China's share of global HPMSM producer count at 93% and its share of non-recycled global HPMSM supply at 96% as of 2023, underscoring that the concentration is not merely in ore but specifically in the refining step (MMTA, Apr 2024).

Why it matters: the United States is 100% net import reliant on battery-grade manganese sulphate, and Europe and North America currently import essentially all of their HPMSM (IEA Global Critical Minerals Outlook 2025). Unlike ore, which is geographically diverse (see Section 2), refining capacity for battery-grade material is overwhelmingly Chinese, meaning Western automakers cannot simply switch ore suppliers to de-risk their cathode supply chains — they must build entirely new hydrometallurgical refining capacity from scratch.

Mining Supply: South Africa and Gabon Together Hold Over 60% of World Manganese Ore Production

Source: USGS MCS 2026. Global manganese ore production, on a manganese-content basis, increased in 2025 versus 2024, with South Africa, Gabon, Ghana, and Australia the leading producers in that order.

South Africa's Kalahari Manganese Field: Samancor, Assmang, and Tshipi

South Africa's manganese output is concentrated almost entirely in the Kalahari Manganese Field in the Northern Cape, and is itself controlled by a small number of joint ventures. Samancor Manganese — operator of the Wessels and Mamatwan mines — is a joint venture 60%-owned and operated by South32 and 40%-owned by Anglo American, structured so that neither partner can sell its stake without the other's agreement; South32 forecasts the JV's South Africa Manganese operations to produce roughly 2.0 million tonnes in its current financial year, down 200,000 tonnes on 2024 (Miningmx, 24 Feb 2025). Anglo American confirmed in February 2025 that it has “no immediate plans” to sell its Samancor stake despite divesting its coal and nickel businesses elsewhere in the same restructuring (Miningmx, 24 Feb 2025). Separately, Assmang — a joint venture between African Rainbow Minerals and Assore — operates the Black Rock manganese complex near Kuruman, comprising the Gloria, Nchwaning 2, and Nchwaning 3 underground mining sections, producing both medium-grade semi-carbonate and high-grade oxide ore for export and for its own Cato Ridge alloy smelter in KwaZulu-Natal (Assmang, Manganese Ore — Black Rock). A third major producer, Tshipié Ntle Manganese Mining (majority-owned historically by Ntsimbintle Holdings alongside Jupiter Mines), operates the large Tshipi Borwa open-pit mine in the same basin; Exxaro Resources' purchase of Ntsimbintle's stake in 2025 fuelled speculation that the Kalahari's fragmented ownership could consolidate further, though South32 CEO Graham Kerr has stopped short of committing his company to a consolidator role, noting “the Kalahari, if you're going to be in manganese, is probably the most important basin in the world — not because of quality, but because of pure size” (Miningmx, 17 Mar 2026).

Australia's single-asset exposure: GEMCO and the 2024 cyclone shock

Australia's contribution runs through a single dominant asset: South32's Groote Eylandt Mining Company (GEMCO) in the Northern Territory. In March 2024, Tropical Cyclone Megan brought 681 mm of record rainfall and some of the strongest wind gusts recorded in 20 years, flooding mining pits and severely damaging the export wharf, forcing a full suspension of operations (South32, “Export sales resume at GEMCO,” 19 May 2025). South32 committed A$125 million to the recovery effort (Mining Weekly, 29 Aug 2024), and the wharf rebuild alone required more than 317,000 labour hours and the removal of over 970 tonnes of steel and 740 tonnes of concrete debris from the seabed before export sales resumed in May 2025 (South32, 19 May 2025). Bloomberg described the mine as resuming shipments a full year after the storm.

GEMCO was hit again before fully normalising. In its March 2026 quarterly report, South32 disclosed that Tropical Cyclone Narelle forced a further temporary suspension of operations and evacuation of non-essential staff, compounding pre-existing elevated site water levels; Australia Manganese production fell 27% quarter-on-quarter to 589,000 wet metric tonnes, and South32 cut its FY2026 Australia Manganese guidance by more than 6% to 3.0 million wmt (Reuters, 21 Apr 2026). CEO Graham Kerr said the company's “strong balance sheet leaves us well placed to manage short-term volatility in global markets” (MarketScreener, 21 Apr 2026).

Gabon: Eramet's Moanda/COMILOG operation and the 2029 raw-ore export ban

Gabon's manganese output runs almost entirely through one operator: Eramet, via its Comilog subsidiary at Moanda, the world's second-largest manganese ore producer by volume and the highest-grade major seaborne ore source. Comilog and its rail-logistics arm Setrag together support an estimated 10,460 jobs in Gabon (Reuters, 2 Jun 2025). In a significant policy shift, the Gabonese government announced in June 2025 that it will prohibit exports of unprocessed (crude) manganese ore starting 1 January 2029, intending to force in-country beneficiation and value addition rather than continued raw-ore shipment; Eramet's share price fell sharply on the news, and the company said it “acknowledged” the government's intention while committing “to collaborate with the authorities in a spirit of constructive and mutual respect” (Reuters, 2 Jun 2025). As an interim step ahead of the full ban, Gabon's strategic-minerals regulator set transitional export quotas of up to 18,000 tonnes for the remainder of 2025 and roughly 96,600 tonnes per year in 2026 and 2027 for smaller miners, according to analysts at BMO Capital Markets (BMO Capital Markets commentary via LinkedIn, Jun 2025). By mid-2025, Eramet was reported to be proposing a path to continue manganese operations in Gabon under revised terms, and in May 2026 Gabon's government moved to acquire a direct equity stake in an international manganese-mining company operating in the country — a further sign that Libreville intends to capture more value from the resource rather than simply banning exports outright (Africanews, 13 May 2026).

Why it matters: unlike bismuth or gallium, manganese ore itself is not geographically scarce — USGS lists no substitute for manganese in its major applications and notes South Africa's reserve base alone could support current world consumption for decades (USGS MCS 2026). The vulnerability is concentration and weather exposure: GEMCO alone supplies a meaningful share of seaborne high-grade ore, and two cyclones in three years have shown how quickly a single tropical storm on a single island can tighten the global ore market and lift ferroalloy prices worldwide (see Section 4). Gabon's planned 2029 export ban adds a second, policy-driven risk to the world's second-largest ore source, layered on top of Australia's weather-driven risk to the third-largest.

Steel Is Still the Real Market: ~90% of Manganese Consumption Goes Into Ferroalloys

Ferromanganese and silicomanganese: the deoxidizing agents steel cannot do without

Roughly 90% of manganese produced worldwide is consumed as ferromanganese and silicomanganese, essential deoxidizing and desulfurizing agents without which modern steelmaking cannot function; every tonne of steel requires a small but non-negotiable dose of manganese. In the United States — which has produced no domestic manganese ore since 1970 and is 100% net import reliant on manganese content — reported consumption in 2025 was estimated at 410,000 tonnes of ore, 350,000 tonnes of ferromanganese, and 250,000 tonnes of silicomanganese (USGS MCS 2026).

U.S. import dependence and sourcing diversification

Source: USGS MCS 2026. U.S. import sources for ferromanganese (2021–24 average) were Malaysia 26%, Australia 16%, Norway 16%, and South Africa 14%; for silicomanganese, Georgia 24%, South Africa 23%, Australia 18%, and Malaysia 13% — a diversified sourcing pattern with essentially no direct Chinese share, reflecting the different supply chain from the battery-grade material discussed in Section 1.

Global steel demand: the flat backdrop behind ferroalloy pricing

On a manganese-content basis, total U.S. manganese imports were estimated to have decreased by 5% in 2025 compared with 2024, tracking flat global steel output (USGS MCS 2026). World Steel Association's short-range outlook, cited directly by USGS, found global finished steel consumption unchanged year-on-year in 2025, meaning the ferroalloy market's underlying demand base has been essentially flat even as battery-related demand for high-purity material accelerates.

Why it matters: the steel-alloy market is the reason manganese trades as a bulk commodity priced in dollars-per-dmtu (dry metric tonne unit) rather than as a specialty battery chemical — and it is this bulk market, not the smaller and faster-growing battery segment, that absorbs the vast majority of South African, Gabonese, and Australian ore. Any supply shock at GEMCO or in Gabon (Section 2) is transmitted first and most visibly into ferroalloy prices paid by steelmakers, not into HPMSM prices paid by battery makers, because the two downstream markets draw on largely separate ore qualities and processing routes.

Price Dynamics 2024–2026: The Groote Eylandt Shock and Its Slow Unwind

Sources: USGS MCS 2026; Ferro-Alloys.com, quarterly realised price data, May 2025; IEA Global Critical Minerals Outlook 2025.

Why manganese diverged from the rest of the battery-metals complex in 2024

The IEA's market review is explicit that manganese was the outlier among battery metals in 2024: while lithium, cobalt, graphite, and nickel prices all declined on oversupply, “manganese prices stood out as an exception, rising notably in the second half of 2024 due to supply disruptions in Australia and Gabon, coupled with growing demand” (IEA Global Critical Minerals Outlook 2025). The knock-on effect reached European ferroalloy buyers directly enough that the European Commission later cited a “significant increase in imports” of manganese- and silicon-based ferroalloys as grounds for its 2025 safeguard action (see Section 6).

Ore versus finished-alloy versus battery-sulphate: three separate price curves

On the finished-alloy side, Fastmarkets and CRU track ferromanganese and silicomanganese separately from ore: Chinese ferromanganese (high-carbon, 75% Mn) traded around $1,146/mt in March 2026 (ChemAnalyst, Ferro Manganese Price Trend), while European Platts assessments in November 2025 put standard ferrosilicon, ferromanganese, and silicomanganese at €1,215/mt, €937.5/mt, and €955/mt respectively on a DDP Northwestern Europe basis (EUROMETAL, 14 Nov 2025). Battery-grade manganese sulphate trades on an entirely different curve, assessed by Fastmarkets separately in yuan/tonne exw mainland China terms (Fastmarkets, Manganese prices, news and market analysis).

Why it matters: manganese's price behaviour illustrates a market where a handful of large single-site mines (GEMCO in Australia, COMILOG in Gabon) can swing global ore prices by double digits within a quarter, even though the underlying resource base is abundant and geographically spread. The March 2026 recurrence of a cyclone at the same Australian mine that was shut for over a year following the 2024 event signals that weather-driven supply risk at Groote Eylandt is now a recurring rather than one-off feature of the manganese price cycle.

Breaking the Refining Bottleneck: Element 25, Euro Manganese, and South32 Hermosa Race to Build Non-Chinese HPMSM Capacity

Element 25 (ASX: E25) signed a definitive offtake and financing agreement with General Motors in June 2023 under which GM committed an $85 million senior secured loan and agreed to buy up to 32,500 tonnes per year of HPMSM for seven years from a planned Louisiana facility, with Stellantis as a second offtake partner (General Motors investor release, 26 Jun 2023). The company secured a site at Veolia's Burnside, Louisiana facility in May 2024, received a Title V air permit, and was selected for award negotiations on a US$166 million U.S. Department of Energy grant under the Battery Minerals Processing and Battery Manufacturing Program, alongside US$57 million in Louisiana state tax incentives (Element 25 Annual Report, FY2024). The Louisiana plant, sourcing concentrate from Element 25's Butcherbird mine in Western Australia, was targeted at up to 135,000 t/yr of HPMSM — but in May 2026 the company disclosed it was reviewing its project execution plan and renegotiating supply terms with GM after “project schedule changes resulted in delivery timelines not being met,” citing evolving EV demand (New Orleans CityBusiness, 26 May 2026).

Euro Manganese (TSX-V/ASX: EMN) is pursuing a different route: reprocessing century-old tailings at the decommissioned Chvaletice pyrite and manganese mine in the Czech Republic into both HPMSM and high-purity electrolytic manganese metal (HPEMM). A comparative life-cycle assessment found Chvaletice's HPEMM, produced using 100% renewable power, would carry a carbon footprint 64% lower than the Chinese incumbent industry average, and its HPMSM produced via EMM dissolution 59% lower, while its product would be free of the selenium contamination found in some Chinese-sourced material (Euro Manganese LCA study release, 5 Apr 2024). The Czech government declared Chvaletice a strategic deposit in March 2025 (Euro Manganese, 25 Mar 2025), and the project is listed among the European Commission's first batch of Critical Raw Materials Act strategic projects (List of CRMA strategic projects, EU).

South32's Hermosa project in Santa Cruz County, Arizona is developing a domestic mine-to- HPMSM chain targeting 60,000 t/yr of battery-grade manganese sulphate. The U.S. Department of Defense made its first-ever Defense Production Act Title III award for manganese production — a $20 million grant to South32 in May 2024 — explicitly described by DoD as reducing “import dependency throughout the battery material supply chain” (Defense Production Act Title III announcement, 17 May 2024). The U.S. Department of Energy separately committed up to $166 million to Hermosa in September 2024 (Mining.com, 20 Sep 2024). As of the March 2026 quarter, Hermosa had progressed FAST-41 federal permitting with its Final Environmental Impact Statement released, with a capital-expenditure decision milestone due in the second half of 2026 (South32, March 2026 Quarterly Report).

Why it matters: McKinsey's projection that only 20% of global HPMSM supply will meet battery-grade specifications by 2030 underscores that the constraint is not raw manganese availability but qualified refining capacity, and every one of the three non-Chinese projects remains pre-revenue, subject to financing, permitting, or offtake renegotiation risk. Element 25's disclosed schedule slippage in May 2026 is a live illustration of how difficult it has proven, in practice, to replicate China's vertically-integrated battery-materials refining base on a commercial timeline that matches automaker production ramps.

Standards and Policy: Manganese Sits on Every Major Critical-Minerals List, and Europe Just Moved to Protect Its Ferroalloy Producers

EU Critical Raw Materials Act: both critical and strategic

Under the EU Critical Raw Materials Act, manganese is listed as a Critical Raw Material in its own right and as “Manganese – battery grade” on the shorter list of 16–17 Strategic Raw Materials reserved for materials of the highest strategic importance to the green and digital transitions and to defence and space applications (EU Raw Materials Information System, Critical and Strategic Materials). Of the EU's first batch of 47 CRMA strategic projects announced in March 2025, seven concerned manganese, spanning extraction, processing, and recycling — including Chvaletice (Section 5) and several multi-metal hydrometallurgy and recycling ventures such as GALLICAM, NorthCYCLE, and Portovesme CRM Hub (List of CRMA strategic projects).

EU ferroalloy safeguard: tariff-rate quotas effective November 2025

On the trade-defence side, the European Commission's safeguard investigation — launched in December 2024 covering six ferroalloying elements — concluded with definitive measures effective 18 November 2025, running through 17 November 2028. The measures apply country-specific tariff-rate quotas set at roughly 75% of 2022–24 average import volumes for ferromanganese, silicomanganese, ferrosilicon, and ferrosilicomagnesium, with out-of-quota shipments facing a variable duty if priced below thresholds of €1,316/mt (ferromanganese) and €1,392/mt (silicomanganese) (Reuters, 18 Nov 2025; Metals Hub, EU Ferroalloy Safeguards summary). The measures apply to imports from all countries, with specific quotas assigned to Brazil, China, Georgia, India, Malaysia, South Africa, Thailand, and Zambia (EUROMETAL, 14 Nov 2025).

United States: DPA Title III support alongside a "not critical" DOE classification

In the United States, manganese has been eligible for Defense Production Act support since at least 2022, when the Department of Defense's Title III determination for critical materials named manganese explicitly among minerals needed for large-capacity batteries alongside lithium, nickel, cobalt, and graphite (U.S. Department of War, DPA Title III Presidential Determination, 5 Apr 2022). That authority produced its first concrete manganese award in May 2024 — the $20 million DPAI grant to South32 Hermosa (Section 5). Separately, the USGS 2026 Government Stockpile table shows the National Defense Stockpile positioned to potentially dispose of 292,000 tonnes of metallurgical-grade manganese ore and 18,000 tonnes of high-carbon ferromanganese in FY2025, while acquiring a small quantity (5 tonnes) of electrolytic manganese metal — reflecting a stockpile still weighted toward legacy bulk ferroalloy holdings rather than battery-grade material (USGS MCS 2026).

Notably, manganese's DPA eligibility coexists with an unusual classification gap: the Department of Energy's 2023 Critical Materials Assessment scored manganese as “noncritical” in both the short term and medium term — one of only seven materials (alongside aluminum, copper, phosphorus, silicon, tellurium, and titanium) to receive that designation — on the reasoning that “the supply risk of manganese will be minimal in the short term as production capacity will easily meet expected demand and strong producer diversity exists,” even though DOE separately noted supply risk “should increase slightly in the medium term given potential supply chain bottlenecks and the viability of deposit ore grade” (U.S. Department of Energy, 2023 Critical Materials Assessment). DOE's producer-diversity data in that assessment (South Africa 36%, Gabon 23%, Australia 17%, China 5%, Ghana 5%, India 2%) is the analytical basis for treating raw manganese as lower-risk than battery-grade HPMSM specifically — a distinction the DOE assessment predates, since its focus was on manganese metal supply broadly rather than the refined-sulphate choke point the IEA and USITC highlight (Section 1) (DOE 2023 Critical Materials Assessment). This is a meaningful divergence from bismuth, antimony, or gallium, where DOE, EU, and USGS assessments broadly align on criticality; for manganese, the EU's CRMA treats it as both critical and strategic while DOE's own quantitative screen does not, reflecting the EU's narrower focus on the battery-grade sub-market versus DOE's whole-of-market view.

China's non-controlled status, with an indirect battery-precursor exception

China has not, as of mid-2026, placed manganese metal, ore, or HPMSM under the export-licensing regimes it has used for bismuth, antimony, gallium, germanium, tungsten, or rare earths — the various 2024–25 MOFCOM announcements and the October 2025 rare-earth control expansion do not name manganese as a controlled item (Taylor Wessing, China's Expanded Export Controls on Rare Earths, Oct 2025). China's October 2025 controls did, however, reach manganese indirectly: the announced restrictions cover nickel-cobalt-manganese hydroxide precursor materials and lithium-rich manganese-based cathode materials, meaning downstream battery-precursor flows containing manganese can fall under licensing even though manganese metal and HPMSM themselves are not directly named (Global Times, 9 Oct 2025).

Why it matters: manganese's policy treatment diverges sharply from bismuth or antimony: rather than facing Chinese export weaponization, the acute Western policy response so far has been defensive trade protection in Europe (the ferroalloy safeguard) and industrial-policy grants in the U.S. (DPA and DOE funding for Hermosa and Element 25) aimed at building parallel battery-grade refining capacity before China's dominance in that specific niche becomes a geopolitical lever rather than simply a market-structure fact.

The Investment Angle: No Liquid Exchange Contract, Two Separate Price Curves, and Growing Analyst Coverage of the Battery Premium

CRU Group publishes the most granular independent price-assessment suite: separate curves for high-carbon and medium-carbon ferromanganese (China, EU, India, Japan, U.S. bases), electrolytic manganese metal flake, manganese ore lump (36–39% and 44% grades, CIF China and FOT Tianjin), silicomanganese (60% and 65% Mn grades across China, EU, India, Japan, and the U.S.), and a standalone China 32% Mn-min battery-grade manganese sulphate assessment (CRU Group, Ferroalloys prices). Fastmarkets similarly runs a dedicated battery-grade manganese sulfate price (exw mainland China, yuan/tonne) separate from its ores-and-alloys daily service (Fastmarkets, Manganese prices, news and market analysis).

USGS itself sources its official average manganese-content price from CRU Group, quoted in dollars per metric ton unit (dmtu) for 44%-manganese ore on a China CIF basis — the reference figure used throughout Section 4 of this deep-dive (USGS MCS 2026). This dmtu convention (price per percentage point of manganese content per tonne) is unique to manganese ore trading and reflects the wide range of ore grades sold globally, from roughly 35% to 54% manganese content.

Equity-market exposure to the manganese investment case runs through a small set of listed vehicles: South32 (ASX/LSE/JSE: S32) for the largest diversified ore exposure via GEMCO and South Africa Manganese plus the Hermosa battery-grade optionality; Element 25 (ASX: E25) for pure-play Australian ore and the Louisiana HPMSM project; Euro Manganese (TSX-V/ASX: EMN) for the European tailings-to-battery-material route; and Eramet (Euronext Paris) via its Gabonese COMILOG operations, historically the other pole of world seaborne ore supply alongside South Africa. Junior developers such as Firebird Metals and Black Canyon have separately demonstrated laboratory-scale HPMSM production from Australian ore, though none has reached commercial production.

Why it matters: the absence of a liquid futures market means manganese price risk cannot be hedged the way copper or aluminium exposure can — buyers and producers are reliant on OTC contracts referencing assessed indices, and the bifurcation between bulk-ferroalloy and battery-sulphate pricing means the "manganese price" reported in generalist financial media is frequently ambiguous about which of the two very different markets it describes. Investors and offtake buyers need to track CRU, Fastmarkets, or SMM assessments by specific product code, not a single headline number.