Mining company calls Minnesota manganese deposits richest in U.S.

Minnesota appears to have hit the jackpot again in the quest for strategic resources and minerals increasingly in demand for electronics, laptops, phones, batteries and defense industry.

Less than a year ago, geologists for a Canadian company announced the discovery of one of the world’s richest pockets of helium gas near Babbitt, Minnesota. Now it turns out that drilling by another Canadian-owned mining company has confirmed the state also holds the biggest and richest known deposits of manganese–not just in the U.S. but in the Northern Hemisphere.

Manganese is used in numerous products including steel, aluminum cans, for fertilizer and animal feed and as a deodorizer for wastewater treatment plants. It is also sought after as a component for lithium ion batteries, especially in such a high grade as the Emily deposit is, said Rick Sandri, Electric Metals director.

“It’s the high purity part, that’s why the target is toward that end,” Sandri said.

The president of North Star Manganese and CEO of parent company Electric Metals recently told the Brainerd Dispatch the spectacular core drill samples taken last year in the old Cuyuna Iron Range in the Emily area hold tremendous promise for our state and country.

While the project is years away from coming to fruition, if and when mining starts [Brian] Savage estimated a 300,000-500,000 tons per year operation, which he described as a medium-sized underground mine.

And, it would be the only such manganese mine in the United States.

“So we would expect our product to be in pretty high demand,” Savage said. “In fact, I call it a dream scenario for the battery manufacturers to be able to say that they sourced 100% domestic manganese and hybrid manganese sulfate monohydrates for their batteries.”

Before that happens, there will plenty of regulatory hoops to go through, given the notoriously anti-mining posture of the Walz administration. Company officials already appear to be well aware of the regulatory minefield ahead of them.

The next steps for North Star Manganese is putting together an updated drill program to determine the feasibility of a potential mine, Savage said.

“The way I like to talk about it is you’ve got to begin with the end in mind, and the end in mind is putting the mine into production,” Savage said in a June 26 interview in Brainerd. “What do we need? What information do we need in order to get there? And so when we’re developing our drill program, we want to have the permitting people, the environmental baseline people, the geologists, mining engineer, process guys, lawyers, all in the room saying — if we need to finish a feasibility study, what information do you guys want so that when we start this drill program, we’re making sure that we’re getting as much of that information as possible.”

The potential mine resides on just under 300 acres of privately owned land with the possibility of expanding to adjacent property. The manganese exists in iron ore deposits as deep as 600 feet below the surface. The owners have reached out to residents of the popular resort area to highlight the potential benefits of a mining operation.

Savage and Sandri also said they want to be open with the Emily community and keep information coming on the progress of the proposed mine, which is the reason for their June visit to the Brainerd lakes area.

“We want to work with the locals to get something that they can benefit from, as can we and our shareholders and the state and, in fact, the United States. I mean, that’s a lot of dominoes there,” Sandri said. “We could make a lot of people smile, one way or the other. It’d be nice to have a U.S. producer of manganese because right now, you’ve got 100% of that high grade material coming from China.”

Minnesota politicians and policy makers have slowed and stopped the development of the state’s world-class mineral deposits for decades. Yet increased demand for strategic minerals amid heightened tensions with nations that supply them will only intensify the pressure for the U.S. to tap into domestic deposits like Minnesota’s manganese.