Giyani Metals CEO Robin Birchall: The Significance of Manganese in the Battery Metals Market

Giyani Metals (TSXV:EMM) CEO Robin Birchall acknowledged the upcoming shortage of battery metals in the next few years. In the interview, Birchall highlighted the importance of manganese and provided an update on how Giyani Metals is preparing to meet demand from the electric vehicle industry.

“I would like people to take away from this conversation the importance of manganese — it's equally important as nickel and cobalt,” Birchall said.

High-purity manganese is used in the battery cathodes that provide life to electric vehicles. Giyani is focused on becoming one of Africa's first low-carbon producers of high-purity manganese sulfate monohydrate (HPMSM). Giyani recently completed an infill drilling program at the K.Hill manganese oxide project.

“It's an excellent project," he said. "The infrastructure is everything you need to build a mine. You have everything in place already. The K.Hill manganese oxide project has been previously mined for the metal to go into steel. It's a proven resource. We've created the resource, done all the metallurgical work and we're bringing it to the very end of feasibility now.”

From feasibility, according to Birchall, will be the process of actually starting to construct the demonstration plant. The company will then move to a final investment decision.

Giyani has already handed over the process flowsheet for the K.Hill project to a specialist hydrometallurgical engineering firm for the construction of a demonstration plant that will provide material to potential customers for quality testing. The first shipments are expected in 2023, and the company is looking at shipping options from Botswana to the European and American markets.

“We have a number of options in which way we can go out. We can either go out through South Africa, but there's also, quite importantly, the west coast in Namibia, a relatively new one built by the Chinese. We obviously prefer to avoid the Suez Canal.”

With regards to Giyani’s other projects in Botswana, Birchall said that they have drilled out and the assay results will be released soon.

“We've done a little bit of reconnaissance drilling there, but we will move through the next phases in the next 12 months. We want to grow this overall resource to something that can supply a significant battery manufacturer.”

Watch the full interview of Giyani Metals CEO Robin Birchall above.

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