RE: RE: MN pricing and supply Geez, Stockhouse just "disappeared" an 8- or 9-paragraph post (which took 40 minutes to write) that i was just about to send-- allaying the concerns of all the ignorant nervous nellies posting here about prices, etc.... i just don't have the time or energy to try to compose the whole thing over again word for word, but I’m hastily typing up the following to reproduce some of what i wrote-- and apologies for the impatient tone.
Bottom line: before presuming to post and raise alarmist Qs, would people PLEASE, PLEASE do some d.d. about the difference between 1) basic Mn ore with impurities (much of which comes from South Africa), 2) the ferro- and silica- forms of Mn (much of which comes from S.Africa), and 3) the two electrolytic products EMM (98.5% of which comes from China) and EMD. (And don't mix up that “manganese briquette” impure form that the Chinese are substituting in certain applications for EMM, the latter is notably often called “Mn metal flake” in the industry).....
And please educate yourself about how 1) the quoted price in China’s domestic market will differ from 2) the global price (as, for instance, quoted at Rotterdam’s port, which includes the 20% China export duty), which is less than 3) the USA or N.American price, which includes the 14% import duty as well as the 20% Chinese export duty.
Furthermore: no need for anyone to get worried about the holiday season weakness in EMM demand.... all the EMM experts are saying this is just a temporary dip... exacerbated by all the fears of a European recession/depression. Prices should pick up in the new year. You all surely must have read the big report by the CPM Group for AMY on the VERY favorable supply/demand dynamics for EMM over the coming years for any new producer, and b/c of the many advantages AMY enjoys, AMY should be the clearcut leading new producer. Recall, too, that CPM (the leading metals consultant in the world) did not dare to mention what many of us regard as a very strong probability down the road: that China will eventually need to impose export QUOTAS, not just export DUTIES, on their EMM exports, b/c their domestic demand will rapidly outstrip supply capacity. When China enacted export QUOTAS (not just duties) on the REEs (rare earth elements), those prices soared 6-fold to 100-fold (depending on the particular REE) over a 2- to 4-year period.
Here are the three best metal sites for articles and prices and charts on EMM:
https://www.metalprices.com/pubcharts/Public/Manganese_Price_Charts.asp
https://www.asianmetal.com/news/getProductsNewsEn.am?productThreeID=164
https://www.metalfirst.com/price.php?category=C017&page=1
Also, watch a really good introd. video on the different kinds of Mn (including the highest-purity products EMM and EMD) at the International Manganese Institute (IMnI) home page at https://www.manganese.org/
No need for anyone to worry about EMM price volatility right now. Have you checked the price of SILVER recently and since early May? Now THAT is a very price-manipulated, very volatile commodity; EMM is not. The year-end dip for EMM global and USA prices is only about 12% from very recent prices in Nov. In fact, as Chris and I have often discussed, there’s a lot of smuggling of EMM out of China via Vietnam by small Chinese producers (to avoid paying the 20% duty) which is finding its way to Rotterdam and other places and thereby artificially depressing the global price. China is going to be massively consolidating their EMM industry for various reasons which I’ve repeated umpteen times on these boards (here and at IHUB) over the past several months…. the consolidation will eliminate something like 200 small producers and result in only about a dozen major producers…. to better curb pollution and eliminate smuggling as far as possible. Even after that major consolidation, China’s EMM production costs are estimated to be well above $1.30/lb. S.Africa’s costs for producing the measly 1.5% of EMM for the world market will be even higher, indeed, going through the roof b/c of much higher electricity prices developing as you read this….
AMY’s costs per lb. should be HALF of China’s EMM production costs. And China produces 98.5% of the world's EMM.
Now go research what the most world-renowned critical minerals expert Jack Lifton says about producers of minerals/metals who have the lowest-cost production advantage…. They rule the world in their particular commodity! And AMY will likely be doing this not only with EMM but also with EMD/LMD for the battery market. Again: lowest-cost producer wins!!
Happy New Year
Happy NOW!
--timothy