Manganese: Correlation
Prices it moves with, and why
Manganese ore is mined mainly in South Africa, Gabon and Australia and sold under private contracts. Nearly all is turned into ferroalloys for steel, so its price tracks steel output, with batteries a small but growing use.
No public price Manganese has no public monthly price series: Ore and alloys trade on private contracts; no free public price series.What its price moves with
Manganese removes sulphur and oxygen from molten steel and strengthens it, and there is no practical substitute, so steel production sets demand almost one for one. Prices rise when Chinese mills restock and fall when steel output is cut.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Manganese ore and iron ore are both shipped in bulk to the same Chinese steel mills, so they respond to the same restocking cycles and freight costs. Some districts, such as South Africa's Northern Cape, produce both.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.NMC and newer manganese-rich cathodes use high-purity manganese sulphate, a growing niche that pays far more than steel-grade alloy. Battery demand is still small next to steel, so it adds a premium segment rather than setting the ore price.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Electrolytic manganese metal and battery-grade manganese sulphate are made by leaching ore in sulphuric acid, mostly in China. Acid is a real but modest cost compared with electricity in these plants, which are often idled when power is short.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Ferromanganese and silicomanganese are smelted in submerged arc furnaces that use large amounts of electricity, so power costs in South Africa, India and China set alloy prices and can force smelters to idle.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.How to read these numbers
Correlation of monthly changes (the number in the coloured pill) compares how much each price moved, month by month, since 2006 or the first month both series exist. It runs from −1 to +1: near +1 the two usually rise and fall in the same months, near 0 there is no link, and a negative number means they tend to move in opposite directions. Above 0.7 is strong, 0.4 to 0.7 moderate, 0.2 to 0.4 weak.
12-month changes compare year-on-year moves, which shows whether two prices share the same cycles even when the month-to-month noise differs.
Price function is a straight-line fit of the two prices on logarithmic scales: price ≈ k × (partner price)β. β is how much this price moves, in per cent, for a 1% move in the partner over the whole period, and R² is the share of the variation the fit explains. Two prices that both drift up with inflation can fit well without any real link, so read it together with the monthly correlation.
Lead or lag checks whether the monthly correlation is clearly higher when one price is shifted by 1 to 6 months.
Correlation is not cause. The reasons on each card explain the economic link; the numbers show how strongly it has shown up in prices. Proxy series are US producer price indexes or related prices and can blur the real link.
Data: World Bank Commodity Price Data (Pink Sheet), October 2026; US Bureau of Labor Statistics producer price indexes, IMF primary commodity prices and US EIA prices via FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, retrieved November 2026. Calculations by this site.