Vietnam’s Ministry of Industry and Trade suggested that wolfram (tungsten) is off the list of minerals permitted for export in the current period, without details of the length of the “current period.”
The proposal is part of a draft for the Prime Minister’s decision on strategic and critical minerals export and processing. The ministry clarified that the decision is not a permanent “ban” and can change.
The central reason is to protect feedstock for the domestic deep-processing chain. Vietnam has already built an advanced hydrometallurgical and refining chain for wolfram. But the chain runs on both domestic material and supplementary feedstock from outside, including imports. Domestic concentrate is an important input for downstream operations.
The draft prioritizes feedstock for domestic refining and aims to preserve the country’s higher-value wolfram products. Exporting at a lower processing stage could compete directly with domestic processors, the ministry said.
Reserves, concentration, Masan High-Tech Materials as miner
Vietnam’s wolfram resources and reserves are put at roughly 309,407 ton of WO₃, concentrated overwhelmingly at the Nui Phao polymetallic mine in Thai Nguyen province, also the country’s largest commercial source of wolfram. The mine operates with a design capacity of about 3.5 million tonnes of run-of-mine ore per year.
The domestic wolfram industry is anchored by the Nui Phao – Masan High-Tech Materials (MHT) complex. The facility’s output includes refined products, such as ore and concentrate to sodium tungstate, ammonium paratungstate (APT), tungsten oxide, and metal and alloys. MHT is affiliated with Vietnam’s FMCG conglomerate Masan.
In 2025 the complex mined about 2.005 million tons of ore and fed roughly 2.28 million tons into processing. For 2026–2030, the complex can raise tungsten oxide capacity 8,000 tons of WO₃ per year.
In a periodic disclosure filed with the Hanoi Stock Exchange in late August, MHT reported consolidated results for the first half of 2026 (H1/2026) with a net profit of VND2,202 billion ($84.5 million), against a loss of roughly VND216 billion in H1/2025.
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