Making Big Rocks into Little Rocks

January 27, 2023 – Millarville, Alberta

Manganese is used in the manufacture of gravel crushing equipment.  The substance hardens steel, used to fabricate cone crushing liners.   Cone liners are the business end of a gravel crusher, they are the mechanism that hammers rocks into gravel. 

Leasing gravel crushers was one of the specialized financial services my company was involved in at the time.  We had hundreds of pieces of gravel crushing equipment on our books, many of which relied on manganese to make them work.

During the apartheid years in South Africa, most developed countries, Canada included, imposed embargoes on products exported by South Africa.  Manganese was on the list of banned products, which became a very real problem for my gravel crushing clients, and by extension for my company.  If customers couldn’t crush gravel for lack of manganese cones, they couldn’t make payments on their loans.

Like many other forms of prohibition, trade embargoes often don’t have the desired effect.  The South African manganese embargo caused the worldwide price of the mineral to escalate.  A robust black market sprang up as illegitimate dealers stepped in to fill the need.  One of my customers purchased manganese cones from a Belgian supplier (at double the usual price) and was later charged for circumventing import restrictions when it was determined that the metal had originated in South Africa.  The charge was eventually dropped, but the customer’s crusher sat idle for some time.

The manganese trade embargo disappeared when apartheid ended in 1991, and my clients went back to work, … 

… making big rocks into little rocks.

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Bear and I are traveling to South Africa on Monday, to look for lions, elephants, fossils, and manganese (among other things). I will send you a ticket and your boarding pass on Sunday, so you can ride along.
See You Then.

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