A sharp increase in manganese ore production from Ghana since early last year has led to increasing volumes of the ore being sold as raw material for China's manganese alloy market, in addition to its traditional application, manganese metal, market sources told Fastmarkets.
The world's largest manganese metal producer, China's Ningxia Tianyuan Manganese Industry Co (TMI), agreed in 2016 to buy Jersey-headquartered manganese producer Consmin, owner of Ghana Manganese Corp and the Woodie Woodie manganese project in Australia. TMI has capacity of 800,000 tonnes per year of manganese flake. Ghana Manganese, the West African country's only manganese producer, doubled its production between January and December 2018 to about 7 million tpy. China imported 1.49 million tonnes of manganese ores from Ghana in the first quarter...