30 September 2025

Manganese: from steelmaking to grid-scale energy storage

Key insights from this briefing

Why is manganese essential to steel production?

Manganese performs critical metallurgical functions during steelmaking, including deoxidation and desulphurisation, and it is also used as an alloying element to improve strength and work-hardening behaviour. These roles make manganese difficult to substitute across large parts of global steel production.

How could manganese become more important in future energy storage?

Beyond steel and battery cathodes, manganese can be used in redox-flow battery systems for large-scale stationary storage. Its useful electrochemical properties, established industrial supply chain and relatively broad resource base make manganese relevant to technologies designed to balance electricity grids with increasing renewable generation.

Excerpt from this briefing's Industry Insight

Manganese is a foundational industrial material whose importance extends well beyond batteries. It is essential in steelmaking for deoxidation, desulphurisation and alloying, while manganese chemistry is also being explored for large-scale redox-flow batteries. The briefing highlighted the metal's unusual breadth: it is critical to existing heavy industry, has important biological functions, and could support future grid storage. That combination makes manganese strategically significant even when short-term prices are weak.

This is an excerpt from the Industry Insight in the full Market Briefing. Log in to access the complete briefing.