Masan High-Tech Materials partners with S Korea’s GBI on tungsten processing

Masan High-Tech Materials (UPCoM: MSR), the mining unit of Vietnamese conglomerate Masan Group (HoSE: MSN), has entered into a strategic partnership with South Korea’s GB Innovation (GBI) to process Korean tungsten concentrate into higher-value products in Vietnam, strengthening a non-Chinese tungsten supply chain.

Under the agreement announced on Thursday, tungsten concentrate produced by GBI in South Korea will be shipped to Vietnam, where MSR’s tungsten processing and chemical plant will convert the material into ammonium paratungstate (APT) and tungsten oxide products.

Processing fees will be linked to a percentage of the APT price index published by Fastmarkets and protected by a floor-price mechanism, helping to mitigate margin risks, improve earnings visibility, and optimize the utilization of the Vietnamese firm’s existing processing platform.

South Korea has significant tungsten resources at the mining stage, with GBI targeting annual production of around 200,000 tons of ore. However, the country lacks large-scale processing capacity to transform domestic concentrate into higher value-added tungsten products for industrial applications.

For GBI, the partnership is expected to help complete South Korea’s non-China tungsten supply chain, spanning mining to refined intermediate products used by domestic manufacturers.

By processing GBI’s concentrate into APT and tungsten oxide in Vietnam, Masan High-Tech Materials will provide a missing link between mining operations and downstream industries such as defence, semiconductors, aerospace, automotive manufacturing, specialty alloys, and other high-tech sectors.

Recently, MSR announced a plan to expand exploration and mining activities around its flagship Nui Phao tungsten complex in the northern province of Thai Nguyen.

Under the prime ministerial Decision 866 on national mineral planning, the expanded Nui Phao area covers 42.9 hectares adjacent to the existing mine and is estimated to contain nearly 55.2 million tons of polymetallic tungsten ore, while the nearby Nui Chiem area is believed to hold an additional 60 million tons of resources.

At the mine’s current exploitation capacity of about 3.5 million tons of ore annually, the newly identified resources could support an additional 20-30 years of mining and processing operations, MSR said.

MSR reported VND2.99 trillion ($113.82 million) in net revenue in the first quarter of 2026, up 114.9% from a year earlier, while net profit reached nearly VND536.7 billion ($20.41 million).

As of March 31, the company’s total assets had increased 7.4% from the beginning of the year to more than VND28.42 trillion ($1.08 trillion), while total liabilities rose to nearly VND15.7 trillion ($597.14 million) from VND14.28 trillion ($542.98 million) at the start of the year.