Euro Manganese (TSX-V / ASX: EMN) has updated the market with progress on its high purity manganese project in the Czech Republic. Regular readers of The Armchair Trader will know that the company has been making steady progress with an exciting project that involves reprocessing manganese from historic mine tailings in Central Europe.
The company’s goal is to become a leading, competitive and environmentally superior primary producer of ultra-high-purity manganese products in the heart of Europe, serving the lithium-ion battery industry, as well as other high-technology applications.
In a statement from Euro Manganese this week in conjunction with the release of its Q3 financials and MD&A, the company provided shareholders with financial and operational highlights from the quarter and a progress report.
The company entered into a royalty termination agreement at the end of May to purchase and extinguish a net 1.2% smelter royalty interest agreement in the Manganese Chvaletice Project for a net consideration of $4.5m.
Euro Manganese to re-start pilot plant at Chvaletice
During the quarter Euro Manganese also announced plans to re-start its pilot plant to produce samples of high purity manganese finished products made from the Chvaletice tailings. This will allow prospective customers to continue or initiate their supply chain qualification of Euro Manganese products in advance of receiving large-scale samples from the project’s demonstration plant.
Speaking of the demonstration plant, Euro Manganese also confirmed the fabrication of the plant is proceeding well. The plant is being pre-fabricated and assembled in China before being shipped to Europe for installation, commissioning and startup. The project has seen some delays due to the pandemic and some supply chain disruption in China, but fabrication of the component parts in China is essentially complete, with assembly of individual modules to start in the coming weeks.
Commissioning and initial production from the development plant are expected in the second quarter of 2022.
Exploration license extended to end of May 2026
The Czech Ministry of the Environment extended the company’s exploration licenses to the end of May 2026. This gives it plenty of time to work on the extraction from the tailings and to get the commercial plant up and running. A Preliminary Mining Permit was also granted, also to the end of May 2026, which extends Euro Manganese’s exclusive rights and allows it to conduct a Final Environmental and Social Impact Assessment (EIA).
The final EIA and feasibility study are ongoing: completion is expected at some point in Q1 2022. Eventual environmental permitting is expected towards the end of next year.
Euro Manganese CEO Marco Romero said: “As the Chvaletice Manganese Project moves forward, the future of the electric vehicle industry and high-purity manganese in EV batteries has never looked better. During the last several months we have seen major policy announcements from the European Commission and the United States designed to accelerate the world’s transition to e-mobility and develop sustainable battery and battery raw materials supply chains.”
Romero said that Euro Manganese remains very well-positioned to benefit from the ongoing trend towards increased use of manganese-rich batteries. There have been recent announcements from several major automotive, battery and battery materials industry players which demonstrate the value of this resource for the European battery manufacturing market, including the automotive space.
“EMN is well positioned to benefit from this momentum, and our battery grade manganese products made by recycling waste stand to become a valuable element of Europe’s emerging battery value chain,” Romero said.
Euro Manganese has also completed a second tranche of a brokered private placement using CHESS Depositary Interests. This allowed it to raise almost $28m and it finished the quarter with $33.8m in cash.
