Union Power Metals: The Critical Mineral Setup the Market is Missing
Summary
Europe imports nearly all its high-purity manganese while China controls roughly 90% of global refining, so the bottleneck sits in processing rather than ore supply.
The EU's Critical Raw Materials Act sets 2030 targets of 10% domestic extraction and 40% domestic processing, pulling forward projects located inside EU borders.
Manganese is the quiet M in NMC and LMFP battery chemistries, earning far less attention than lithium, copper, or graphite despite growing demand.
Two Slovak deposits hold 24.3 Mt of historic manganese not yet 43-101 compliant, and untested layers sit beneath the current estimate.
A financing led by Eric Sprott funds roughly 18 months of Slovak drilling and, the guest says, drew other institutional names onto the cap table.
Eric Sprott's takeaways
- Top takeaway The guest says Eric Sprott led the company's most recent financing round, earlier in the year, and reads that as a signal: in his view Sprott "doesn't show up unless the thesis is real" and is pitched many deals every week.
- He argues the round has an effect beyond the cash - it brings capital and pulls other institutional names onto the cap table - while being explicit that he is not speaking for Sprott.
Derrick Dao's takeaways
- Top takeaway Dao's central argument is that Europe needs a domestic high-purity manganese supply: China refines over 90% of the world's high-purity manganese, Europe imports effectively all of its high-purity manganese sulphate, and the EU has legislated 10% domestic extraction and 40% domestic processing by 2030.
- He positions manganese as the overlooked battery metal - the "M" in NMC and LMFP chemistries that he expects to grow as buyers push for cheaper EV batteries - and argues that, being under-covered today, press discovery should come later and harder.
- He treats location as central to the thesis: end users are inside Europe's battery belt, and any supply that depends on maritime shipping carries both a price premium and a delivery risk when routes such as the Strait of Hormuz are closed.
- He argues the 10.4 Mt historic figure for Mikulova is the floor rather than the ceiling, because Soviet drilling stopped at the first manganese horizon while a couple of deeper structural holes indicate up to five stacked layers that the historic estimate ignores.
- He names his near-term catalysts: confirmatory drilling at Mikulova in Q2 2026 to validate the multi-horizon layers, a 43-101 compliant resource for that deposit, and the Botswana radiometric survey and drill targets for September 2026, all funded by the just-closed round.