Tests show Emily manganese deposit is highest-grade in North America – Brainerd Dispatch

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BRAINERD — Officials with North Star Manganese and Electric Metals recently visited the Brainerd area to provide updates on test drilling on a manganese deposit near Emily.

While no decision has been yet made to move forward with a plan to start mining operations, Brian Savage, the new president of North Star Manganese and CEO of its parent company, Electric Metals, said not only is the manganese deposit potentially the largest in North America but 2023 drilling confirmed it to be the highest-grade deposit in North America.

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 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.”

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.

Updating the drilling program will include possibly reconfiguring how exploration boreholes on the site are configured, continued engineering and conducting geologic studies on the rock at the site to determine the feasibility and safety of an underground mine.

“So I know people, including us, are quite frustrated with the amount of time that we're going to have to take thinking about things, but this is the time to think about things,” Sandri said. “If we make a mistake, it's hard to correct some of those mistakes later.”

While the project is years away from coming to fruition, if and when mining starts 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.”

Along with updating the drilling program and performing geologic studies, North Star Manganese also wants to make sure all permitting processes, hydraulic studies, environmental studies, social aspects, legal and regulatory compliance and other technical and economic feasibility studies are in order.

“It’s the zen of developing a mine. There’s a process and you go through the process,” Savage said. “It’s a lot easier to do it right the first time.”

Added Sandri: “I know, and I know Brian is as well, but my mind is working on this seven days a week, 24/7. How do we do things better? How do we speed things up? How do we make sure we cover? How do we ask every question 12 different ways that we feel satisfied with that answer?”

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.”

While exploration on the site goes back decades, the most recent attempts at drilling on the site took place about a decade ago.

In 2008, Crow Wing Power entered into a joint venture agreement with the property owner of the land on which the manganese deposit sits with a plan to develop it. In 2011, tests were started to determine if the deposit could be extracted via borehole exploration — a hydraulic method during which water is blasted into a vein to produce a slurry that is transported to the surface and processed.

However, largely because of its volcanic origins, the Emily manganese deposit proved too compacted and dense. Borehole operations at that time stalled.

In 2019, the Emily site was the subject of controversy after it was learned three Crow Wing Power executives had royalty stakes in the manganese deposit through for-profit subsidiaries owned by the power cooperative, which opponents — including some Crow Wing Power Board members — saw as a conflict of interest.

Opponents claimed the Crow Wing Power executives and the cooperative's governing board lacked transparency, called for an external audit and also threatened legal action .

Later in 2019, Crow Wing Power reached an agreement with North Star Manganese to evaluate the site near Emily. Nevada Silver Corp. — now doing business as Electric Metals — now has 100% ownership and management in the Emily Manganese Project, according to the company’s website, and leases the property from Crow Wing Power.

The Emily Manganese Project sits on two blocks of private land totaling 291 acres of mineral rights with potential access to contiguous land within a footprint exceeding 500 acres, Electric Metals reported.

According to previous reports, the Emily lode is possibly the largest manganese deposit in all of North America and specifically in the United States, which imports 100% of its manganese from Africa, Asia and South America.

It's a deposit featuring a rare combination of size, accessibility and high-grade manganese — estimated at 4 billion to 10 billion pounds — potentially worth billions of dollars. In addition, there's iron ore that could be harvested from the site.

The Emily deposit is a manganiferous iron deposit. It is not a sulfide deposit and will not produce sulfuric acid. Detailed exploration was carried out by Pickens Mather, U.S. Steel and other in the 1940s and 1950s. U.S. Steel developed an open mine pit plan in 1959. Manganese exists within iron ore mineralization from 250 feet to 600 feet below the surface, similar in depth to other Minnesota iron ore deposits. Source: Electric Metals

MATT ERICKSON, Editor, may be reached at matt.erickson@brainerddispatch.com or 218-855-5857.

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