Mining

WCA Group operates its mining activities through its Brazilian subsidiary, Mineração Spazio Alpha Concorde Importação e Exportação LTDA. Since December 2013, this junior mining company is developing the ALBA Project consisting in two concessions of medium and high grade manganese ore in Bahia, Brazil. Spazio Alpha Concorde directly manages the exploration and mining operations in the areas of Serrinha and Coarací, Bahia. 

WCA Group plans to put both mines in production by June 2016 and start selling manganese ore with an initial output of up to 10.000 MT/month in total: 6.000 MT from the Alpha mine dedicated to the steelmaking industry and 4.000 MT from the Bravo mine dedicated to the production of fertilizers.

Manganese, is the fourth most used metal in the world after iron, aluminum and copper. It is never used in its own right as a pure metal, but it’s an important raw material for many applications.

The final market for over 90% of all manganese ore produced is steelmaking. It is added to improve the strength, toughness, stiffness, hardness, wear resistance, and hardening of steels. Ore is transformed into ferroalloys such as silico-manganese, ferro-manganese or manganese metal. These are essential raw materials for carbon and stainless steel as alloying elements, desulphurizing agents and deoxidizers in the metallurgical process.

The remaining 10% is used to produce a range of manganese compounds, indispensable in the chemical industry for the production of batteries, fertilizers, pigments and different reagents.