Eramet Buys New Manganese Mine

Patrick Buffet, CEO of Eramet, French major ferroalloy supplier, holt press conference in Tokyo on Thursday and the firm mulls to buy second manganese ore mine after Gabon in Africa. Mr. Buffet will invest aggressively and expand product family of metal for ferroalloy for steel making.

The firm advances expansion plan of manganese ore and enhances competitive power for niobium or lithium in Gabon.

The firm is second supplier of manganese ore, which increases output capacity to 4 million tonnes by 500,000 tonnes until 2012. Moreover, the firm starts research for development of near mine.

The firm started construction of new plant for manganese ferroalloy in the amount of capacity at 20,000 tonnes per year and silicon manganese in 65,000 tonnes in 2012. In China, the firm decided new address of Guilin plant and starts the operation in 2011, which change production system by blast furnace from electric furnace, and produces low-middle manganese ferroalloy.