Manganese's Applications: 90 Percent Goes Into Steel, Full Stop
Almost everywhere manganese goes, it goes into steelmaking, a single dominant application rivalled only by lithium's battery concentration on this site.
Steelmaking
Desulphurisation and alloying, with no practical substitute, covered on the mining page, the dominant use by a wide margin.
Batteries
LMO and NMC cathode chemistries, covered on the materials science page, a small but fast-growing category.
Other
Chemicals, fertiliser additives, and a range of smaller specialty uses.
The breakdown
This makes manganese demand, in practice, a direct derivative of global steel production volumes, roughly 1.85 billion tonnes a year, covered on steel’s own dashboard, rather than a market with its own independent demand cycle.
Sources: end-use shares reference this project’s own verified demand data (USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2025, International Manganese Institute).