Element 25 Ltd (ASX:E25) has made its second commercial shipment of high-quality manganese concentrate from the Butcherbird Manganese Project in Western Australia's Pilbara region, marking another milestone in its project development journey.
The loading of around 27,000 tonnes of high-quality manganese concentrate aboard the Handymax size vessel Taokas Wisdom further validates the company’s goal to develop the project as a globally significant producer of high-quality manganese concentrate and high purity battery grade manganese sulphate (HPSM).
With the ship departing the Utah Point facility at Port Hedland on August 30, the ore is set for delivery to offtake partner OM Materials Pte Ltd, a wholly-owned subsidiary of ASX-lister OM Holdings Ltd (ASX:OMH).
Plans to move to larger shipments
Production at Butcherbird continues, however, E25 plans to move to larger shipments of 55-60,000 tonnes to take advantage of more competitive shipping tariffs at larger cargo sizes.
To facilitate the change in cargo sizes, the manganese stock has established a laydown area at Pippingarra in Port Hedland where the larger shipments will be established before secondary hauling into the Utah Point facility.
Advancing towards EV demand
Element 25’s business development team is focusing on the next stages of the multi-stage development strategy of the project, which includes a stage-2 expansion of the concentrate business followed by a stage-3 development to convert concentrate material into high purity manganese sulphate monohydrate (HPMSM) for electric vehicle (EV) batteries to power the global transition away from fossil fuel-powered mobility.
Manganese is emerging as an increasingly important ingredient for EV batteries, with potential supply constraints for nickel and cobalt forcing battery manufacturers to look to high manganese cathodes to produce the vast amount of cathode material required by the EV industry in coming years.
The Butcherbird project is ideally placed to feed this potential demand, with advanced flowsheet development work undertaken in 2019 and 2020 confirming a simple leach process for E25 ores which, when combined with offsets, will target the world’s first Zero Carbon ManganeseTM for EV cathode manufacture.