Euro Manganese (ASX:EMN) can now produce bulk high-purity manganese samples to send to potential customers for qualification.
The company has completed commissioning of the demonstration plant at its Chvaletice Manganese Project in the Czech Republic.
Two independent external laboratories have confirmed that samples of high-purity manganese sulphate monohydrate (HPMSM) made from high-purity electrolytic manganese metal (HPEMM) produced at the plant meet the design target specifications with low levels of impurities.
Euro Manganese has also confirmed the consistent operation of all modules.
CEO Matthew James says completion of commissioning enables the company to offer prospective customers the optionality of on-spec HPEMM and/or HPMSM products with very tight impurity levels.
“In fact, some high-purity manganese samples from the demonstration plant have already been provided to certain parties to allow them to start or continue with their product qualification process,” he says.
This reduces the timeline to test products from the Chvaletice commercial plant in the future.
Additionally, Euro Manganese has received a permanent operating permit for the demonstration plant from the Department of Building and Spatial Planning of the Municipality of Chvaletice.
The company is continuing optimisation activities, which include collecting relevant data to feed into the engineering of the commercial plant, preparing intermediate process stream and residue samples for vendor testing of process equipment, and producing byproduct samples for testing and potential marketing.
“While this commissioning process has taken longer than initially expected, the insight gained continues to provide opportunities for engineering and operational process improvements for our planned Chvaletice commercial plant,” James says.
The Chvaletice Project is not a mining project, instead it involves reprocessing old tailings from a decommissioned mine. Euro Manganese, which is dual-listed on the TSX Venture Exchange (TSX-V:EMN) says it is the only sizeable, classified resource of manganese in the European Union.
The operation would produce 48,000 tonnes per annum of manganese.
Write to Angela East at Mining.com.au
Images: Euro Manganese
