Let’s look at the final steps of the manganese process, that’s the part three of our series, as it is transformed from huge slabs of material to a ready-to-use additive for our customers.
Crushing
Manganese isn’t a one-size-fits-all material. When a customer places an order, the cooled product slabs are transported to Eramet Marietta’s crusher system where the manganese is broken up into a variety of sizes according to the customer’s specifications.
Packing and Shipping
Once the manganese alloys have been sized correctly, the product is generally loaded into trucks, although some orders are packaged in bags, and shipped to customers, most of which are located within 500 miles of our south-eastern Ohio plant.
Implementation
Manganese has finally made it to the end of its Eramet Marietta journey. As we’ve mentioned, manganese is an important raw material in the steelmaking process because of its ability to add strength and hardness, thereby making steel stronger and less brittle. In fact, if it’s steel, it contains manganese. For that reason, many of our largest customers are steelmakers.
Once the manganese is added, the steel can be moulded into many things, including the highway guardrails used on roads to keep us safe.