Many critical raw materials play vital roles in the economy, often enabling niche yet essential high-tech applications. Manganese, however, is different. As a key ingredient in traditional industry and clean mobility, it’s a metal on which the world fundamentally depends.
Unlike many critical raw materials, manganese is not rare; global ore supply is relatively abundant. Yet its importance is irreplaceable. No alternative material performs the same function in steelmaking, where manganese removes oxygen and sulphur, providing strength and workability. In the energy transition, high-grade refined manganese is increasingly essential in EV batteries, helping to improve safety, performance and lowering cost.
Sourcing concentration
While manganese ore is widely distributed, around 90% of refining capacity – particularly for battery-grade High-Purity Manganese Sulphate Monohydrate (HPMSM) – is concentrated in China. This creates a strategic bottleneck and is a primary reason why refined manganese is considered a critical raw material.
Vincent Braet, Purchase Manager for Manganese at Umicore, explains: “If you look at it geographically, manganese is quite well spread globally. But refining capacity is highly centralized in China, especially for high-purity manganese used in batteries. That’s where the criticality comes from.”
Manganese in advanced battery chemistries
Umicore makes extensive use of manganese in nickel manganese cobalt (NMC) cathode materials. NMC offers an optimal balance of energy density, stability and cost, making it an attractive chemistry for electric vehicles. By combining nickel for higher energy, manganese for safety and structural stability, and cobalt for power, NMC enables longer driving range while maintaining performance and durability.
In the context of NMC cathode-active materials, manganese acts as a structural stabilizer, allowing for longer life cycle of the final battery. It also improves thermal stability, for improved battery safety
Manganese is also critical for lithium-manganese-rich (LMR) batteries, an area of growing importance for Umicore. LMR is one of the most promising new battery materials for the volume segment of the EV market. With less nickel and cobalt, the manganese-rich chemistry offers lower metal costs at NMC-like energy density. Crucially, it poses an alternative to lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries, with equivalent safety, longer driving ranges and good recyclability. As such, LMR is seen as one of the most promising new battery materials. Umicore has developed and protected specific LMR cathode-active materials that can be produced in its sites in Finland and Poland.
As Pierre-Etienne explains: “The biggest advantage of LFP is the lower raw material cost and therefore the lower battery and overall EV price. As a result, our focus is on maximizing the amount of manganese and reducing the use of cobalt and nickel, while preserving performance. As a result, we see manganese playing a crucial role, in the volume segment of the EV battery market. We have developed a large catalogue of NMC and LMR to maximize the use of each technology.”
He adds that an advantage for Umicore is that these technologies do not require separate production facilities. “High-nickel or high-manganese battery materials can be produced in the same factories, allowing us to use the same production capacity for different grades of NMC and LMR technologies.”
Looking ahead, manganese looks set to become even more important in battery technologies as manufacturers seek to reduce material costs, ease reliance on nickel and cobalt, and support more affordable electric vehicles. As Pierre-Etienne says: “I would say there’s an all-round tendency in cathode technology to increase the manganese concentration.”
Manganese may also feature in future solid-state batteries, which replace a liquid electrolyte with a solid substance. Although not yet on the market, solid-state batteries are expected to offer far higher energy density, thereby extending EV driving ranges beyond what is possible today. Umicore holds key patents for this new battery technology and has developed a specific LMR grade for solid-state batteries.
Broader industrial applications
Within Umicore’s Cobalt and Specialty Materials (CSM) business, manganese is used in products such as manganese acetate and manganese carbonate, primarily as catalysts in the chemical industry. A key example is the production of purified terephthalic acid (PTA), a precursor for polymers such as PET.
Manganese compounds are also used as driers in coatings and inks, fertilizers, animal feed, and agrochemicals. This breadth of applications underlines manganese’s broader industrial relevance: even when it is not the most visible or high-value material, it often performs enabling roles in processes and products that modern economies rely on.
Transparency and sustainability
As well as the concentration of refining capacity in China, transparency is another sourcing challenge for manganese. While manganese may not carry the same level of ESG concern over responsible sourcing as cobalt, nickel and lithium, clearer visibility across the supply chain is still needed. “The visibility on the complete supply chain is still not where we’d like it to be,” says Vincent.
Improving that transparency means looking beyond direct suppliers to understand where material originates, how it is processed, and which risks may exist further upstream.
On the plus side, Vincent adds that “manganese typically has a much lower carbon footprint compared with other battery raw materials.” This is because manganese ore generally contains a relatively high concentration of the metal (40% or more), meaning less material needs to be mined and processed to extract usable metal.
For battery makers, this means that increasing the manganese content in cathode materials can help reduce the overall carbon footprint of the material mix, as well as lowering raw material costs. As Vincent puts it, this can be “an additional advantage” of manganese-rich battery chemistries
Recycling – limited role, for now
Because manganese is relatively low value, it has not traditionally been a priority material for recovery.
Manganese typically costs $2 per kg, which reduces the incentive for recycling compared to other metals.
EV battery recycling is unlikely to provide a major near-term source of recycled manganese. Vincent notes that batteries entering the recycling stream over the next 10 to 15 years still contain “more cobalt and nickel than manganese,” meaning “the amount of manganese that you will get now from recycling is still limited. However, that could change as future battery chemistries use more manganese.”
A unique position
Manganese occupies a distinctive place among critical raw materials: abundant in nature, yet essential and sometimes irreplaceable in application. Its long-established role in steelmaking underpins modern infrastructure, while its growing use in battery materials positions it as an important enabler of the energy transition.
As demand grows for electric vehicles, renewable energy storage and resilient infrastructure, manganese is set to become increasingly strategic to both industrial production and the energy transition. It may not be the rarest or most expensive material on earth, but manganese is certainly an essential ingredient of the modern world.
