The Manganese Opportunity
Understanding why battery-grade manganese is a fundamentally different market from steel-grade manganese — and why Europe's supply gap creates a strategic opportunity.
Two Markets, One Mineral
Most commentary on manganese conflates two fundamentally separate industries. Getting this distinction right is the starting point for understanding the investment case.
Steel-Grade Manganese
The dominant manganese market by volume. More than 90% of the world's ~20 million tonnes of annual manganese production is consumed by steelmaking. Manganese is added to steel to improve hardness, toughness, and workability — making it indispensable in structural steel, railway tracks, and automotive sheet.
This market is well-supplied by large-scale, low-cost mining operations in South Africa, Gabon, and Australia. Processing follows a pyrometallurgical route — ore is smelted in electric arc furnaces to produce ferromanganese or silicomanganese alloys delivered directly to steel mills.
Well-supplied. Dominated by South Africa, Gabon, Australia. Pyrometallurgical — high temperature smelting. Not relevant to the battery supply gap.
Battery-Grade Manganese
An entirely different product with entirely different supply dynamics. Battery-grade manganese — specifically High Purity Manganese Sulfate Monohydrate (HPMSM) — is a chemical salt of extreme purity (≥99.95%) used to manufacture cathode materials for lithium-ion batteries.
This market is dominated by China, which controls 85–96% of global HPMSM refining capacity. The processing route is hydrometallurgical — a wet chemistry process requiring acid leaching, multi-stage purification, and controlled crystallization. It bears no resemblance to steelmaking.
Acutely undersupplied outside China. China controls 85–96% of refining. Hydrometallurgical — wet chemistry, extreme purity. This is where Europe's supply gap is widening.
From Ore to Battery: The Supply Chain
Battery-grade manganese requires a fundamentally different process from steel-grade. Here is what happens between the mine and the battery cell — and why ore type is the first critical variable.
The majority of manganese ore globally is oxide type (MnO₂, Mn₂O₃). These oxidised ores contain manganese in the Mn³⁺/Mn⁴⁺ state, which is insoluble in sulfuric acid. Before acid leaching can proceed, the ore must be reduced to soluble Mn²⁺.
This requires a reduction roasting step at 450–600°C, typically using coal or natural gas as reductant. The kiln adds capital cost, operating cost, CO₂ emissions, and process complexity — and can introduce additional impurities that complicate the downstream purification.
China is increasingly switching from depleting domestic carbonate ore to imported oxide ore — meaning even Chinese producers face this added cost. Australia's Element 25 and South32 are developing oxide ore projects targeting this route.
When an ore's impurity profile is particularly challenging, producers can take an intermediate route: rather than crystallizing HPMSM directly from the purified leach solution, they use electrowinning to deposit pure manganese metal from solution.
During electrowinning, an electrical current passes through the solution and pure manganese metal plates onto a cathode as Hochreines elektrolytisches Manganmetall (HPEMM, ≥99.9% Mn). Most impurities — including iron, copper, and lead — do not co-deposit at the same voltage, so the plating step acts as an additional purification pass.
The HPEMM flakes are then stripped from the cathode, dissolved in fresh sulfuric acid, and re-crystallized to produce HPMSM. This trades electricity cost (6,000–7,000 kWh per tonne of metal) for purification certainty — and is particularly relevant for difficult ore chemistries or where regulatory standards for selenium-free production are required (standard EMM production uses selenium as a grain refiner, which is toxic in battery applications).
Karbonaterz dissolves directly in acid, skipping the energy-intensive reduction roasting step, producing fewer upstream impurities, and enabling a potentially lower-carbon, lower-cost route to HPMSM — which is why China's battery-grade manganese industry was originally built on domestic carbonate deposits from Guizhou and Hunan provinces.
HPMSM & HPEMM: What the Battery Industry Buys
Two distinct products serve the battery supply chain. HPMSM is the primary feedstock; HPEMM is an intermediate that can be converted to HPMSM or sold directly to specialty markets.
Pale pink crystalline salt. The direct input into cathode precursor manufacturing (pCAM). What battery plants and pCAM producers actually buy. The fastest-growing and most strategically significant battery material by volume.
Solid metal flakes produced by electrowinning — electric current deposits pure manganese onto a cathode plate. Serves both as a standalone product for specialty steel and aluminium alloys, and as an intermediate step in HPMSM production where additional purification is required.
McKinsey projects that only 20% of global HPMSM supply will meet battery-grade specifications by 2030 — meaning the purity bottleneck, not raw volume, is the primary constraint for European gigafactories.
Battery-grade HPMSM and standard industrial manganese sulfate share the same chemical formula but are entirely different products. Battery cathode producers specify impurity levels in single-digit parts per million — levels that require sophisticated hydrometallurgical processing and rigorous quality control. Not all HPMSM supply meets these standards, which means that global "HPMSM production" statistics overstate the battery-ready supply available to European gigafactories.
Why Carbonate Ore Matters
The ~2% of manganese resources that are carbonate type are disproportionately important to the battery supply chain. Here is why scarcity translates to strategic value.
Oxide Ore (MnO₂ / Mn₂O₃)
~98% of global manganese resources. The dominant type in South Africa, Gabon, Australia, and most of the world's large deposits.
- Requires reduction roasting at 450–600°C before acid leaching
- High-temperature kiln adds capital cost and operating cost
- Generates CO₂ from reductant combustion
- Roasting can introduce new impurities and increase purification burden
- China increasingly importing oxide ore as domestic carbonate depletes
- Euro Manganese Chvaletice (tailings) follows this more complex route
Carbonate Ore (MnCO₃)
~2% of global manganese resources (SAIMM, 2024). Historically the foundation of China's HPMSM industry — Guizhou and Hunan province deposits now depleting.
- Dissolves directly in dilute sulfuric acid — no roasting kiln required
- Mn²⁺ already in soluble form — eliminates the reduction step
- Simpler flowsheet with fewer unit operations
- Potentially lower CO₂ footprint per tonne of HPMSM produced
- Fewer thermally-introduced impurities entering the leach circuit
- Svabovce and Michalova are carbonate — this is the preferred chemistry
China built its dominant position in HPMSM refining on abundant domestic carbonate ore from Guizhou and Hunan provinces. That advantage is eroding: Chinese domestic carbonate deposits are going deeper, grades are declining to sub-economic levels, and the country is increasingly reliant on imported oxide ore. This structural shift — from carbonate to oxide feedstock — raises costs and complexity for Chinese refiners, and creates a window for non-Chinese carbonate deposits to compete. A bulk-mineable carbonate deposit in Europe is genuinely scarce globally, not just regionally.
Battery Chemistries Driving Demand
Multiple cathode chemistries require manganese — and the portfolio is shifting toward higher manganese intensity with each technology generation.
| Chemistry | Full Name | Mn-Anteil | Market Role | Key Development |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| LMFP | Lithium Manganese Iron Phosphate | 40–80% cathode weight | Mass-market EVs, grid storage | The key demand driver. Upgrades from zero-manganese LFP by replacing 40–60% of iron with Mn. Delivers 15–20% higher energy density at similar cost. CATL, BYD, and Tesla are all deploying LMFP. LMFP adoption forecast at 60% CAGR 2024–2030. Gotion-InoBat (Slovakia) specialises in LFP/LMFP. |
| LMO | Lithium Manganese Oxide | 60–70% cathode weight | E-bikes, hybrids, fast-charge | Pure manganese cathode spinel structure. Extremely high power density. Used where fast charging matters more than energy density. |
| LMR-NMC | Lithium-Rich Manganese NMC | 30–50% cathode weight | Next-generation "super battery" | Emerging technology achieving 300+ Wh/kg. Replaces cobalt almost entirely with manganese. The long-term successor to NMC 811 for high-energy applications. Multiple OEMs in development. |
| NMC 622 / 523 | Nickel Manganese Cobalt (6:2:2 or 5:2:3) | 20–30% cathode weight | Mid-range EVs | Established chemistry. Manganese provides structural stability and thermal safety. Still significant volume in European EV production. |
| NMC 811 | Nickel Manganese Cobalt (8:1:1) | ~10% cathode weight | Premium long-range EVs | High nickel reduces Mn content but remains a significant demand source by volume. NMC 622/811 dominates premium European EV segment today. |
Standard LFP contains zero manganese. LMFP replaces 40–60% of the iron in LFP with manganese — transforming a zero-manganese chemistry into one of the most manganese-intensive available, without adding nickel or cobalt. Every gigawatt-hour of LMFP production that displaces LFP creates entirely new manganese demand from scratch.
CATL has announced plans to add manganese to its LFP chemistry to increase energy density by up to 20%. BYD and Tesla are deploying LMFP in their volume models. The Gotion-InoBat gigafactory being built in Šurany, Slovakia — within 300 km of Svabovce and Michalova — specialises in LFP and LMFP chemistries.
The EU has 56 battery gigafactories planned by 2030 with a combined capacity of 1,458 GWh. At current chemistry mix projections, European demand for battery-grade manganese is expected to reach approximately 74,000 tonnes by 2030 — a figure that would grow substantially if LMFP market share accelerates.
Europe currently has 30 gigafactories in operation. Total European investment in gigafactory infrastructure has exceeded €82 billion. The battery demand is real and contracted — the supply gap is the unresolved question.
Europe's Supply Gap
Demand is growing at 33.6% per year. Domestic supply is essentially zero. Every single CRMA benchmark for manganese is currently violated. This is the problem Union Power Metals is positioned to address.
China controls the entire processing bottleneck, not just the ore. Manganese ore is abundant globally — the supply crisis is at the refining stage. In 2023, 93% of all HPMSM producers were Chinese, accounting for 96% of non-recycled global HPMSM supply. NMC battery supply chains carry an 80% China vulnerability index for manganese specifically. China has demonstrated willingness to weaponize mineral supply chains — in 2025 it imposed export controls on LFP cathode technology and rare earth magnets. European gigafactories importing HPMSM from China for EU-assembled batteries also risks conflicts with EU Battery Regulation rules-of-origin provisions.
Where Svabovce & Michalova Fit
Union Power Metals holds a combined 24.3 Mt historic manganese carbonate resource in Slovakia — within Europe's battery manufacturing corridor, at the historic resource verification stage.
Inside Europe's Battery Manufacturing Corridor
The Central European "Battery Belt" — Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Czech Republic — now hosts the densest concentration of gigafactory investment outside China. The Slovak projects are inside this corridor, not adjacent to it.
The EU's Critical Raw Materials Act designates battery-grade manganese as a Strategic Raw Material — the highest priority classification. Slovakia was absent from the 13 EU member states represented in the first CRMA Strategic Project list (March 2025). A second application call has been announced. For a project in Slovakia, this represents a first-mover opportunity: the EU's mandate to develop domestic supply is legally binding, the permitting fast-track for designated projects is real (27 months vs. the typical 5–10 years), and the precedent set by Czech Republic's Chvaletice designation confirms that early-stage EU projects can qualify.
Note: Svabovce and Michalova are at the historic resource verification stage. The company is targeting CRMA Strategic Project status, but has not yet applied. The 24.3 Mt combined historic resource is reported under the GKZ classification system and is not NI 43-101 compliant. A qualified person has not done sufficient work to classify these as current mineral resources under NI 43-101, and resource estimates could differ materially once verified through a compliant program.
Europe's Manganese Gap
Is Our Opportunity
Explore the Svabovce and Michalova projects and learn how Union Power Metals is building a position at the intersection of EU policy, battery demand, and world-class Slovak geology.