The KITCO.com reported on American Manganese Production "When & Why" :

Manganese is used in many forms and applications today and one of the latest is in Cathodes for Lithium-Ion batteries for Hybrid vehicles. This is one reason where I ask “Why” when many are so concerned with Lithium supplies (there are literally mountains of this mineral in Bolivia & Argentina as well as minable deposits in the US and Canada) that little to nothing is being said about Manganese. The battery use form of Manganese is Electrolytic Manganese Dioxide (EMD) and both EMD & EMM must be supplied or produced from raw Manganese ore produced by outside Nations. Over the past 6 years the annual demand growth rate for Electrolytic Manganese has been an astounding 26% per year, primarily due to the steel market and here we are almost totally dependant on China for all the EMM/EMD used by American industry.

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