Soaring Tungsten Adds Impetus to Vietnam Mine Sale Effort

Some 80 kilometers (50 miles) north of Hanoi, in Thai Nguyen province, a massive open-cut mine tears into the landscape. Ringed by dense, green hills, the vast, stepped crater is raw gray and brown. Along its sides, huge trucks creep along, while a murky pool lies stagnant at the bottom.

This is Nui Phao, a mine that’s key to Vietnam’s foothold in the global critical minerals market. It 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.