Battery Metals

State-owned freight utility Transnet’s Port Terminals operating division has taken over operations at an inland terminal for the loading and handling of manganese at Lohatlha, in the Northern Cape.

The terminal is situated about 100 km from South Africa’s manganese belt in the Hotazel area and is specially designed to service emerging miners.

It handles about 1.8-million tons of manganese a year, which could increase to two-million tons at full capacity.

The move to operate an inland terminal will position Transnet to strategically reconfigure one of the critical logistics channels by allowing emerging miners to pile and load manganese onto rail instead of road to the ports.

Transnet took control of the terminal at the start of July, following five years of private operation by SAFreight Logistics.

Transet also operates two other inland terminals – the Pendoring multipurpose terminal in Brits, and the Newcon terminal in Newcastle.

“Operating cargo aggregation and consolidation for effective rail transfer, not only in coastal ports but also in inland terminals, demonstrates Transnet’s ability to apply its core competencies innovatively as we continue to connect the region,” said Transnet chief business development officer Gert de Beer

The demand for manganese (Mn) has continued to soar in Nigeria as the country strives to put the country among top mining destinations in Africa.

Minister of State Ministry of Mines and Steel Development (MMSD), Hon. Abubakar Bawa Bwari gave this hint recently in Abuja.

Speaking at the presentation of letter of participation in research development to representatives of some of Nigerians foremost Universities at MMSD headquarters in Abuja, Hon Bwari said even though the mineral resource is not top on the government’s priority, the demand for it have continued to increase daily.

He said: “Just yesterday (last Wednesday) we received request of manganese.

“This is not one of the minerals that we are targeting but the request has been so consistent that yesterday we had a long meeting with some of our reliable enthusiast who want to buy our manganese but the quantity is not just there.

“And this morning (last Thursday) too I received a phone call of request for 3, 000 tonnes worth of manganese every month and I had to explain that just yesterday we are still trying to meet one request.

He therefore urge investors to go into mining of some of these mineral resources to boost the economic growth of the country.

“I want to say here that from what has been happening in the last two and half years, Nigeria in terms of mining is on the lips of investors…but we all know that we still have challenges.

“Challenges of infrastructure, challenges of information available and other challenges of safety. We have traveled far and near and we know the limitations in this sector especially from our International investor” but the country have continued to inject life into the mining ecosystem.

According to him, N12. 7 billion has been approved in the 2018 budget for exploration purposes to further boost the mining sector.

“I want to announce that just yesterday (last Wednesday) N12.7 billion was approved for exploration.

“Two months ago, we finally secured the electromagnetic data that had been in the hands of the contractor for about a decade.

“This has further made the Nigeria mining jurisdiction more attractive for investors who require as much information as they could get in order to make decisions,” he said.

When it comes to natural mineral deposits, Nigeria is one of the top African countries that is richly blessed and with most of the mineral deposit yet untapped.

Manganese is deposited in the following states in Nigeria: Plateau, Cross River, Adamawa, Kaduna, Kebbi, Katsina,Nasarawa, Borno, Bauchi and Benue.

According to reports, manganese is 12th most abundant elements on earth crust. It is a metal with a silvery-grey colour like that of an iron. it’s brittle, hard, tarnishes slowly in air and oxidizes.

Due to its brittle nature, it is used as alloys in stainless steels. It’s also used in dry cell batteries.

Drinks cans are made of an alloy of aluminium with 1.5% manganese, to improve resistance to corrosion.

The demand of Manganese in Nigeria continues to rise for it is mostly used in the steel industries because of its physical and chemical properties.

Nearly 35 million net tons of steel were imported into the United States last year. That’s more than 100,000 tons a day. Imagine one-and-a-half Ford-class aircraft carriers sailing into America every day. That’s how much steel is coming in from foreign countries.

In recent weeks, there has been much debate about President Trump’s use of tariffs and quotas to address unfair steel imports. President Trump’s actions were necessary because numerous countries use a host of subsidies and dump steel exports all over the world.

In the U.S., imports took 27 percent of the market for finished steel products last year. That is the third highest market share on record, according to our data at the American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI) and the U.S. Census.

Global steel overcapacity has fueled this surge in imports, which has resulted in steel plants shutting down and jobs lost. And China is the biggest culprit. China produces half the world’s steel and has increased its capacity by some 600 percent since 2000.

These significant capacity increases have taken place despite repeated Chinese government policy statements, pledges and proclamations aiming to restructure or reduce steelmaking capacity.

For example, China last year announced that it was closing 140 million metric tons of induction furnace capacity that had never even been included in any official capacity reports.

While direct imports from China have been reduced in recent years — in part due to several successful trade cases brought by the steel industry — high Chinese steel production and exports to third countries continue to threaten the U.S. industry’s health and ultimately our national security.

Unlike in the U.S., where companies exist to make a profit, state-owned companies in China and elsewhere primarily exist to employ people. As a result, they produce massive amounts of steel that is unused in their domestic markets and then dumped all around the world.

In some cases, those exports force other countries to export their own steel production that would normally be used domestically. In other cases, the steel that originates in China is trans-shipped through another country or further processed in another country before being exported to the U.S.

For example, Chinese billets are being further processed in Turkey into long products, which are then exported to the United States, while Chinese flat-rolled steel is being converted into pipe products in Korea, which are then, according to Commerce Department determinations, being dumped into the U.S. market.

There have been several attempts to address state-owned companies subsidizing their steel products and dumping them. President Obama created the Global Forum on Steel Excess Capacity to get all of the major steel-producing countries in a room together to try to find policy solutions.

This proved to be fruitless, as China spent more than a year refusing to even provide data about the fundamental problem, let alone giving any indications that it was serious about necessary reforms.

In addition, in the last Congress, the trade laws were strengthened to address foreign companies illegally bypassing antidumping and countervailing duty laws. But this also failed to solve the problem, as China responded to high U.S. duties by exporting large amounts of subsidized steel to third markets.

Given these past unsuccessful attempts to solve the problem and with the industry suffering, President Trump initiated an investigation under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, with the Commerce Department ultimately finding that steel is both critical for national security and that the sustained flood of subsidized imports was threatening the industry.

Since neither negotiations nor targeted responses successfully solved the problem, President Trump implemented a more comprehensive remedy, imposing quotas or tariffs on most of our trading partners.

We’re just beginning to see the positive results of the president’s actions — domestic production is increasing, steel companies are investing more in communities throughout the country and steel jobs are being added for the first time in years.

Now some in Congress want to undermine Section 232 with no back-up plan for how to address the underlying problem. That is shortsighted and must be stopped. We applaud Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and other senators who are working to block these misguided attempts.

The president’s actions should be given time to work, while the administration continues to have discussions with our North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) partners and others on rebalancing our trade relationships.

The story of steel begins long before bridges, I-beams, and skyscrapers. It begins in the stars.

Billions of years before humans walked the Earth—before the Earth even existed—blazing stars fused atoms into iron and carbon. Over countless cosmic explosions and rebirths, these materials found their way into asteroids and other planetary bodies, which slammed into one another as the cosmic pot stirred. Eventually, some of that rock and metal formed the Earth, where it would shape the destiny of one particular species of walking ape.

On a day lost to history, some fortuitous humans found a glistening meteorite, mostly iron and nickel, that had barreled through the atmosphere and crashed into the ground. Thus began an obsession that gripped the species. Over the millennia, our ancestors would work the material, discovering better ways to draw iron from the Earth itself and eventually to smelt it into steel. We’d fight over it, create and destroy nations with it, grow global economies by it, and use it to build some of the greatest inventions and structures the world has ever known.

Metal From Heaven

King Tut had a dagger made of iron—a treasured object in the ancient world worthy of few more than a pharaoh. When British archaeologist Howard Carter found Tutankhamun’s tomb nearly a century ago and laid eyes on this object, it was clear the dagger was special. What archaeologists didn’t know at the time was that the blade came from space.

Iron that comes from meteorites has a higher nickel content than iron dug up from the ground and smelted by humans. In the years since Carter’s big discovery, researchers have found that not only King Tut’s dagger but also virtually all iron goods dating to the Bronze Age were made from iron that fell from the sky.

To our ancestors, this exotic alloy must have seemed like it was sent by entities beyond our understanding. The ancient Egyptians called it biz-n-pt. In Sumer, it was known as an-bar. Both translate to “metal from heaven.” The iron-nickel alloy was supple and easily hammered into shape without breaking. But there was an extremely limited supply, brought to Earth only by the occasional extraterrestrial delivery, making this metal of the gods more valuable than gems or gold.

It took thousands of years before humans started looking beneath their feet. Around 2,500 BC, tribesmen in the Near East discovered another source of dark metallic material hidden underground. It looked just like the metal from heaven—and it was, but something was different. The iron was mixed with stones and minerals, lumped together as ore. Extracting iron ore wasn’t like picking up a stray piece of gold or silver. To remove iron from the subterranean realms was to tempt the spirit world, so the first miners conducted rituals to placate the higher powers before digging out the ore, according to the 1956 book The Forge and the Crucible.

But pulling iron ore from the Earth was only half the battle. It took the ancient world another 700 years to figure out how to separate the precious metal from its ore. Only then would the Bronze Age truly end and the Iron Age begin.

The Long Road to the First Steel

To know steel, we must first understand iron, for the metals are nearly one and the same. Steel contains an iron concentration of 98 to 99 percent or more. The remainder is carbon—a small additive that makes a major difference in the metal’s properties. In the centuries and millennia before the breakthroughs that built skyscrapers, civilizations tweaked and tinkered with smelting techniques to make iron, creeping ever closer to steel.

Around 1,800 BC, a people along the Black Sea called the Chalybes wanted to fabricate a metal stronger than bronze—something that could be used to make unrivaled weapons. They put iron ores into hearths, hammered them, and fired them for softening. After repeating the process several times, the Chalybes pulled sturdy iron weapons from the forge.

What the Chalybes made is called wrought iron, one of a couple major precursors to modern steel. They soon joined the warlike Hittites, creating one of the most powerful armies in ancient history. No nation’s weaponry matched a Hittite sword or chariot.

Steel’s other younger sibling, so to speak, is cast iron, which was first made in ancient China. Beginning around 500 BC, Chinese metalworkers built seven-foot-tall furnaces to burn larger quantities of iron and wood. The material was smelted into a liquid and poured into carved molds, taking the shape of cooking tools and statues.

Neither wrought nor cast iron was quite the perfect mixture, though. The Chalybes’ wrought iron contained only 0.8 percent carbon, so it did not have the tensile strength of steel. Chinese cast iron, with 2 to 4 percent carbon, was more brittle than steel. The smiths of the Black Sea eventually began to insert iron bars into piles of white-hot charcoal, which created steel-coated wrought iron. But a society in South Asia had a better idea. India would produce the first true steel.

Around 400 BC, Indian metalworkers invented a smelting method that happened to bond the perfect amount of carbon to iron. The key was a clay receptacle for the molten metal: a crucible. The workers put small wrought iron bars and charcoal bits into the crucibles, then sealed the containers and inserted them into a furnace. When they raised the furnace temperature via air blasts from bellows, the wrought iron melted and absorbed the carbon in the charcoal. When the crucibles cooled, ingots of pure steel lay inside.

India’s ironmasters shipped their “wootz steel” across the world. In Damascus, Syrian smiths used the metal to forge famous, almost mythological “Damascus steel” swords, said to be sharp enough to cut feathers in midair (and inspiring fictional supermaterials like the Valyrian steel of Game of Thrones). Indian steel made it all the way to Toledo, Spain, where smiths hammered out swords for the Roman army.

In shipments to Rome itself, Abyssinian traders from the Ethiopian Empire served as deceitful middlemen, deliberately misinforming the Romans that the steel was from Seres, the Latin word for China, so Rome would think that the steel came from a place too distant to conquer. The Romans called their purchase Seric steel and used it for basic tools and construction equipment in addition to weaponry.

Iron’s days as a precious metal were long over. The fiercest warriors in the world would now carry steel.

Holy Swords and Samurai Steel

According to legend, the great sword Excalibur was imposing and beautiful. The word means “cut-steel.” But it wasn’t steel. From the age of King Arthur through Medieval times, Europe lagged behind in iron and steel production.

As the Roman Empire fell (officially in 476), Europe spun into chaos. India still made its sensational steel, but it couldn’t reliably ship the metal to Europe, where the roads were unkempt, merchants were ambushed, and people feared plague and illnesses. In Catalonia, Spain, ironworkers developed furnaces similar to those in India; the “Catalan furnace” produced wrought iron, and lots of it—enough metal to make horseshoes, wheels for carriages, door hinges, and even steel-coated armor.

Knights brandished specially crafted swords. They were forged by twisting rods of iron, a process that left unique herringbone and braided patterns in the blades. The Vikings interpreted the designs as dragon coils, and swords like King Arthur’s Excalibur and El Cid’s Tizona became mythological.

The best swords in the world, however, were made on the other side of the planet. Japanese smiths forging blades for the samurai developed a masterful technique to create light, deadly sharp blades. The weapons became heirlooms, passed down through generations, and few gifts in Japan were greater. The forging of a katana was an intricate and ritualized affair.

Japanese smiths washed themselves before making a sword. If they were not pure, then evil spirits could enter the blade. The metal forging began with wrought iron. A chunk of the material was heated with charcoal until it became soft enough to fold. After it cooled, the iron was heated and folded about 20 more times, giving the blade its arcing shape, and all through the forging and folding, the wrought iron’s continued exposure to carbonaceous charcoal turned the metal into steel.

The United States made 7.1 million tons of steel in May, a 3 percent year-over-year increase.

The Brussels, Belgium-based World Steel Association reported that the 64 steel-producing countries made 154.9 million tons in May, up 6.6 percent from May 2017. Steel mills worldwide operated at a utilization capacity of 77.7 percent, which is 4.2 percentage points higher than in May 2017 and 1 percentage points higher than in April.

China again made more than 10 times as much steel as the United States in May, according to the World Steel Association. It produced 81.1 million tons of steel that month, an 8.9 percent year-over-year jump.

The United States also was eclipsed in steel production in March by India, which produced 8.8 million tons, and Japan, which made 9.1 million tons.

In May, steel production rose by 3 percent in South Korea, 3.7 percent in Italy, 7 percent in Spain, 0.5 percent in Turkey, and 2.9 percent in Ukraine.

Steel output fell by 6.5 percent in France and 8.6 percent in Brazil in May.

China’s construction steel rebar futures rose on Monday on falling inventories and potential stimulus plans, with focus shifting back to market fundamentals and away from the festering Sino-U.S. trade war.

U.S. tariffs on $34 billion worth of Chinese goods took effect on Friday, prompting similar steps in retaliation from Beijing. But, as expected, there were no fresh Chinese tariffs on steelmkaing raw material iron ore.

The most-active construction steel rebar on the Shanghai Futures Exchange had edged up 0.6 percent to 3,793 yuan ($572.43) a tonne by 0212 GMT.

Spot steel prices fell 0.2 percent to 4,294.66 yuan a tonne on Friday, Mysteel data showed.

“The tariffs finally came to pass, without surprises. Now the market is turning back to focus on fundamental factors,” said a Beijing-based steel trader.

Meanwhile, BMI Research said in a note that China “would look at stimulating the economy in order to prop up growth should economic headwinds become too pressing”, indirectly stoking metals demand.

Inventories of steel products at Chinese traders, an indication of market demand, fell last week after a two-week increase. Total stocks had dropped 154,600 tonnes to 10.1 million tonnes as of July 6, data compiled by Mysteel consultancy showed.

That eased investor concerns over excessive supplies as demand for steel products is typically weak during China’s summer.

The utilisation rate at steel blast furnaces across China climbed by 0.28 percentage points to 71.55 percent last week, with mills resuming operations after central government led-environmental inspectors finished checks in some regions.

Stockpiles of imported iron ore at Chinese ports fell alongside the reopening of steel mills, indicating increased restocking demand for steelmaking ingredients. They dropped 2.37 million tonnes to 153.42 million tonnes last week from the week before, Mysteel data showed.

The most-traded iron ore futures on the Dalian Commodity Exchange slipped 0.6 percent to 455 yuan a tonne on Monday.

Coking coal for September delivery gained 0.4 percent to 1,152.5 yuan a tonne, while coke futures rose 0.8 percent to 2,018.5 yuan. ($1 = 6.6261 Chinese yuan renminbi) (Reporting by Muyu Xu and Josephine Mason Editing by Joseph Radford)