Manganese X Energy: The Next Battery Generation

A recent article in the Financial Post highlighted Manganese X Energy Corp. (TSXV:MN).
As quoted in the article:

Ever heard of electrolytic manganese dioxide? Neither had I until I spoke with Martin Kepman of Maganese X Energy (V.MN) and Rick Mills from aheadoftheherd.com. Nor had I been aware of the huge potential of lithium/manganese batteries.
Manganese is predicted to become a more than US$30B market in rechargeable Lithium Ion batteries by 2020 according to Taiyou Research.
Which makes Manganese X Energy’s Battery Hill New Brunswick deposit all the more interesting. “New Brunswick is a hotbed of manganese.” said Kepman, “Back in the 1950’s Sidwell came up with an estimated 40 million tons of potential manganese deposits. They were seeing an average grade of 9% manganese. Now these are historical estimates. But it seems to be a fair assumption that we will see 9-12% manganese and, say, 30 million tons. But, to start, we are going for 10 million tons with a significant exploration upside for the property.”
A quick look at the Manganese X website confirms that this historical work and the estimates taken from it have been updated to the 43-101 standards, “In early 2016, Perry MacKinnon Consulting prepared a National Instrument (NI) 43-101 Technical Report on the Manganese Occurrences within Exploration Licence 5816 located near Woodstock, New Brunswick. The purpose of the report was to provide a comprehensive independent assessment of the manganese potential of the Battery Hill property. The report reviews and discusses the results of both historic and current surface work along with drilling that was conducted in 2011. The recent fieldwork and drilling were supervised by Perry MacKinnon, P. Geo, who is a qualified person under the terms of NI 43-101.”
As well as the Technical Report, Manganse X on February 14, 2017 reported additional exploratory drilling on its property. In that news release Kepman stated, “We are very encouraged by the results of our initial drill program on the property, which confirmed significant thicknesses of manganese mineralization. The continuity, grade and near surface nature of the mineralization are all very positive. We are currently planning another diamond drilling program to better define the Battery Hill deposit and preliminary metallurgical test work to assess processing options ”
In our interview Kepman expanded on the metallurgy. “Bottom line is the metallurgical process. How do we process? That determines the CAPEX for the project. We are working with Kingston Metallurgical and other companies to get the right flow sheet.”
“We want to purify our manganese to a very high state.” said Kepman. “The manganese is found in bands with iron. We need to separate the iron from the manganese which is highly magnetized. In addition, our expert team is presently in the process of investigating some very innovative, economical, cost saving, environmentally friendly, processes which we anticipate will be very price competitive within the North American market”
Kepman is optimistic that Battery Hill will succeed. “Manganese price has increased 65% year over year. We need to prove we have what we say we have. We have the drill results and now we go on to Phase 2: a Preliminary Economic Assessment and an updated 43-101.”
More drilling is required but with demand for manganese increasing, so long as the metallurgy comes out right, Manganese X Energy is poised to become the sole North American manganese producer in the next few years. It would be an excellent position to be in.
At time of writing Manganese X Energy was trading at $0.21 with 41,185,420 shares outstanding for a market cap of 8.5 million dollars.

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