French mining company Eramet Manganese has been ramping up production at its Comilog operation in Gabon, West Africa, the company says in a note obtained by Kallanish.

“In Moanda, Gabon, Eramet Manganese operates a deposit with excellent grades and easy access. Combined with the quality of the division’s industrial assets and its know-how, Comilog in 2015 set a new production record with 3.95 million tonnes of manganese mined and carried to Owendo Port, up 11% from 2014,” the miner confirms. 

The production increase was made possible by the performance of Setrag, the company that manages the Transgabonais railway concession, which also improved its traffic regularity last and this year, Eramet adds. The Moanda Metallurgical Complex (C2M) was inaugurated in June 2015. The two plants, for silico-manganese and manganese metal, make up the first modern metallurgical facility for processing manganese ore in sub-Saharan Africa.

“The manganese ore market went through a significant shift in 2015 due a significant fall in global carbon steel production. This slump results from the slowdown in the Chinese economy… In addition, Eramet Manganese has to deal with new competition from South Africa as exports by emerging players are buoyed by the rand’s sharp depreciation. As a result, the price of a tonne of manganese ore was halved in 2015. Manganese alloy prices held out better in 2015 than ore prices”, the company continues.

Eramet Manganese represents 18% of global production of the refined alloys market. It makes these alloys in its three Norwegian plants and in the USA, France and China. The division supplies products for high value-added markets, particularly for flat steels for the automotive and shipbuilding sectors.