Euro Manganese’s product is on-spec

In important validation of the company’s Demonstration Plant, our EU + North America manganese Investment, Euro Manganese (ASX:EMN), today announced that its production of high-purity electrolytic manganese metal (HPEMM) was on-spec.

The Demonstration Plant’s product reached 99.9% Mn purity, which is an important step towards getting EMN in EV batteries.

The Demonstration Plant is also making high-purity manganese sulphate (HPMSM) which will be sent off to an external lab for testing.

The Demonstration Plant is making two types of high purity manganese products outlined which in EMN’s DFS — high-purity manganese sulphate monohydrate (HPMSM) and high-purity electrolytic manganese metal (HPEMM).

These two high purity manganese products have different use cases and look like this:

As you can see, the HPMSM (sulphate) looks like salt while HPEMM (metal) is a flake. It is the sulphate product that we’re really interested in here as it will make up the bulk of EMN’s output.

EMN is fine tuning its process and analysing results and aims to produce a product at scale that has a low level of impurities.

Below is the EMN flowsheet with the two final products of the process on the right:

There are a number of advantages to this flowsheet, in particular the ability to use Nano One’s metal to cathode M2CAM One-Pot Process.

This technology, which we highlighted in our recent EMN note, is a cheaper, more sustainable production of battery cathode material (a tech short-cut that strips out unnecessary and hard to dispose of byproducts).

What’s more, we think EMN’s technology partner could help open doors in the future to potential offtake partners - Nano One has a relationship with Volkswagen, two other large automakers and an Asian cathode producer.

What’s next for EMN? With the Demonstration Plants design capacity is 32kg per day of HPEMM or 100kg per day of HPMSM, we are looking forward to updates on these products making their way into the hands of potential customers.

In turn, this could help EMN secure further offtake agreements, in addition to the existing offtake term sheet with French battery manufacturer Verkor.

We think this would firm up expectations potential financiers would have around the manganese market, aiding EMN’s ability to move towards a Final Investment Decision to make the company’s Czech Republic manganese project a reality.

We are also eagerly awaiting further news about EMN’s North American plans, this Scoping Study could be a key plank of EMN’s business down the track following the passage of the US Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).