Recently, China's EMM market has exhibited a distinct dual pattern of "strong cost support with loosening at highs," with intensifying interplay between industry supply and demand and cost dynamics.

On one hand, the tight balance in supply and demand for the core raw material manganese ore persists, compounded by elevated prices of other auxiliary materials, collectively pushing up EMM smelting costs and providing solid floor support for manganese prices.

On the other hand, traditional month-end demand weakness and tightening liquidity, coupled with the downward linkage of related products along the industry chain, have prompted a rational pullback in EMM prices that had been consolidating at highs, with market sentiment gradually shifting from firm stability to cautious wait-and-see.

Raw material side, the sustained rally in the manganese ore market has become increasingly prominent, serving as the core driver of rising EMM costs.Recently, major ex-China manganese ore suppliers have successively raised their export offer prices to China, directly leading to a significant increase in landed costs of imported manganese ore in China, which in turn drove domestic manganese miners to follow suit with higher quotes, creating an overall "rising tide lifts all boats" trend in China's manganese ore market. Supply side, the global manganese ore supply landscape has undergone subtle changes, with some non-mainstream producing regions experiencing continued disruptions in shipment pace due to logistics, capacity, and other factors. Although supply from mainstream producing regions such as Australia has partially recovered, alleviating some supply pressure to a certain extent, it has failed to alter the core pattern of overall tight global manganese ore supply.

Cost pressure has been transmitted across the entire chain to the EMM smelting segment.Besides manganese ore, prices of core auxiliary materials such as sulphuric acid have stayed high, with the dual impact directly pushing up EMM smelting costs and significantly increasing production costs for China's EMM enterprises. Against this backdrop, even though current EMM prices have pulled back slightly, enterprises' willingness to cut prices remains low, as rigid cost-side support has effectively cemented the price floor for manganese, significantly limiting downside room. In terms of price trends, after two consecutive weeks of consolidating at highs, China's EMM market saw rational price declines under the combined impact of multiple bearish factors. As of now, mainstream retail spot tax-inclusive ex-factory cash prices have mostly pulled back to around 18,300 yuan/mt, with individual enterprises in some producing regions offering as low as 18,100 yuan/mt to recover funds, and market transactions have shown a divergent trend.

Weak demand and tightening liquidity have become the core drivers of this manganese price pullback.During the month-end phase, tender volumes from China's steel mills have been sparse, with traditional downstream demand performing sluggishly, suppressing procurement demand for EMM. Meanwhile, prices of related products such as SiMn and FeMn have declined in tandem, weakening overall industry chain support. Combined with cautious expectations at the macro perspective, this has further weighed on market sentiment. In addition, at month-end, capital chains across the industry generally tightened, and some EMM enterprises faced pressure to collect payments, proactively offering slight price concessions to facilitate shipments, causing the previously firm and stable manganese market to gradually weaken, with prices loosening and pulling back.

Looking ahead, as the Labour Day holiday approaches, China's EMM market is gradually entering a pre-holiday wait-and-see period, and market transaction activity is expected to decline somewhat.In the short term, cost side, rigid support still exists, and manganese ore prices fluctuating at highs will continue to constrain EMM's decline, limiting downside room for a significant drop; however, the weak demand landscape is unlikely to improve in the short term, compounded by unresolved capital pressure, and EMM prices are expected to mainly move sideways in the doldrums with controllable declines in the near term.