Canada-headquartered Giyani Metals has secured $16-million in financing from South Africa’s Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) to advance its battery-grade manganese project in Botswana.

The IDC financing is the cornerstone of a $26-million funding package over the next 15 months to progress the K.Hill project to a final investment decision.

The remaining $10-million of funding is in the process of being secured from a strategic investor, which has signed a nonbinding term sheet and is currently in the final documentation stage.

“The demand for HPMSM [battery-grade manganese sulphate monohydrate] projects with robust economics has never been stronger as financial institutions begin to understand the enormous demand for this critical mineral as the world moves definitively towards electric vehicles,” said Giyani president and CEO Danny Keating.

“We look forward to commencing operations at the demonstration plant to enable the distribution of samples to potential customers as we finalise our sales and off-taker strategy for the commercial scale plant to be built in Botswana.”

He said the IDC funding was a “resounding vote of confidence” in K.Hill.

IDC COO Joanne Bate commented in the Giyani statement that K.Hill was an important step in the organisation’s strategy to help initiate the development of a battery minerals industry in Southern Africa.

The demonstration plant, which is currently being completed in Johannesburg, South Africa, will be used to prepare Giyani for the commercial project construction stage.

The demonstration plant will produce up to 600 kg/d of dry HPMSM crystals for shipment to offtakers for product qualification and negotiation of sales contracts, starting in mid-2024.

The firm noted that several tier-one offtakers had expressed interest in bringing K.Hill into their battery raw material supply chains and that a number of them had visited Giyani’s facilities.

The K.Hill preliminary economic assessment base case scenario considers a single production line to process K.Hill manganese oxide material on-site to produce HPMSM, with feed capacity of 200 000 t/y over a 57-year life-of-project.