Vietnam’s Masan plans tungsten mine expansion as it courts foreign capital

Masan High-Tech Materials announced an expansion of its Nui Phao mine and Nui Chiem area, potentially adding 115 million tons of tungsten-polymetallic resources as the company seeks to attract foreign investors and establish a stronger foothold in the global critical minerals supply chain.

This “opens the potential for another 20–30 years of mining and processing, but also strengthens MSR’s long-term strategic position at a time when scaled, deeply processed non-China tungsten supply is increasingly scarce,” Danny Le, chairman of Masan High-Tech Materials, said in an emailed statement.

The 921-hectare Nui Phao project contains one of the world’s most important, and largest, non-China sources of tungsten, a metal essential for everything from chips and drilling equipment to armor-piercing weaponry. The value of the super-dense material has soared in recent months as countries ramp up defense budgets.

With an estimated 3,000 tons in total, Vietnam was the world’s No. 2 producer of tungsten behind Beijing last year, according to the US Geological Survey.

“The expansion of the Nui Phao resources base is aligned with the Government’s orientation to develop Vietnam’s mining sector in a modern and sustainable direction, linking resource extraction with deep processing and higher domestic value-added,” the statement said.

Masan High-Tech, which has been exploring a stake stale with Japanese, Australian, European and American strategic investors, is preparing to transfer its shares from Vietnam’s Unlisted Public Company Market, or UpCom, to the Ho Chi Minh City Stock Exchange and hopes that can be done as early as the first quarter of 2027.

(By Nguyen Dieu Tu Uyen)