Ann: Half Year Report and Appendix 4D-31 August 2022, page-24

Has anybody ever asked JMS management about using Tshipi ore for producing battery materials?

The suggestion is that Manganese carbonate ore is the ideal Mn ore input. On the E25 thread there is some blurb about only 2% of Mn ores in the world are carbonate ores, I think the bloke who wrote that article had blinkers on as the USSR has 100's million tonnes of Mn carbonate ore and they don't mine it, the grade is low too.

E25 has the same problem, only 10% grade and even at US$8.00/dmtu they can only breakeven and their benefication process has had heaps of problems.

"These factors make Russian manganese ores noncompetitive in the international market, and ‐ with rare exception ‐ most of the deposits of these ores are not being mined. All this notwithstanding, the prevalence of carbonate manganese ores within the territory of the Russian Federation means that the exploitation of these natural resources will determine the future of manganese production in Russia. It may eventually be possible to make use of materials from the already-excavated Usinsk deposit in the Kemerovo Province (92 million tons of carbonate ores) and the group of deposits in the North-Ural manganese-ore region (41 million tons of carbonate ores) [1]. However, processing these ores by traditional methods ‐ involving magnetic and gravity separation, flotation, and radiometric concentration ‐ rarely yields commercial manganese concentrates having acceptable quality and cost characteristics."

So the question is will Tshipi Bowra semi-carbonate manganese ore be suitable for battery materials, I think the question should be asked of the new JMS management. I've sent an email about it but haven't had a reply, has anybody else questioned them??