Masan High-Tech Materials, a subsidiary of Masan Group, is undergoing a second metamorphosis after a stunning transformation from a Vietnamese mining company to a leading manufacturer of global high-tech materials.

This entails concentrating on the research and development of technology products with broad applications in an effort to grow into a global consumer technology business.

Starting with a tungsten-based battery project

Nowadays, batteries are realized as the most common component in the consumer technology devices, from mobile phones and laptops to vehicles such as electric motorbikes and electric cars.

Although the battery is considered the energy source of the future, the global battery industry is still faced with challenges, the most typical of which is how to produce a battery cell with long-term energy retention and shorter charge time.

Besides, the batteries need to have higher safety and longer service life.

According to scientific studies, these challenges can be resolved by using the advanced tungsten materials in the battery.

If successful, the new-technology battery will have a 10 times higher power density and 10 times longer durability. It can also be charged 90 percent in five minutes.

Leveraging this innovation, the electric vehicle (EV) industry can produce models that can travel a longer distance with shorter charge time.

Users’ mobile devices will be smaller thanks to less space used for battery.

All technology devices will also be safer because they have higher heat resistance and reduce risks of explosion. 

Furthermore, with a longer battery lifetime, it helps lower much total cost of end users.

The burden of battery recycling after use will also lessen, and the environment will become greener. 

This future is not too far away

In July 2022, Nyobolt, a UK-based provider of Lithium-ion fast-charging battery solutions company, the only producer in the tungsten-battery cell industry with high potential for commercializing its products in the future, managed to raise €52 million (US$50.5 million) from H.C. Starck Tungsten Powders (HCS) – a Germany-based company with over 100 years of experience in tungsten recycling.

The owner of HCS is not at all a stranger, it is none other than Masan High-Tech Materials (MHT).

This handshake signals MHT’s next step in its quest to go above and beyond a global hi-tech materials producer to become a manufacturer of hi-tech consumer goods, including tungsten-based battery cells.

Nyobolt is expected to use HCS hi-tech tungsten materials in its battery anode coating that will help the battery achieve record high capacity. 

As such HCS will, through its new products and inventions like Nyobolt battery, come closer to end users, who will benefit directly from the hi-tech materials technology. 

A complete value chain with a positive impact on the community

Apparently, MHT is expanding its investment to develop a strategy of horizontal and vertical integration.

On the one hand, MHT invests in the companies that can commercialize their products using MHT hi-tech materials to directly meet the need of end users such as Nyobolt battery.

On the other hand, the mining operation and processing of advanced materials with high purity and material recycling are forecast to thrive.

Masan High Tech Materials’ shift in focus from mining to investment in the technologies will have direct impact on end users, marking a deeper market penetration into the consumer sector. 

In reality, the business expansion into subsequent stages of technology materials manufacturing has been proven to be successful.

Take HP for instance, after expanding its business operation from producing office printers and computers to providing ink accessories and printing papers, they gained much higher sales than other businesses selling ink cartridges only. 

According to Harvard Business Review, businesses will be better able to engage in the value chain if they expand to move further downstream, thus boosting sales and revenue, and developing stronger customer relationships that will eventually result in brand loyalty.

This is the reason MHT will not stop at being a leading supplier of global advanced tungsten materials, but the company has aspirations to become a Vietnamese business pioneering in the development of cutting-edge battery technology and battery recycling at the end of their useful lives. 

At the MHT 2022 Annual General Meeting of Shareholders, Craig Richard Bradshaw, CEO of MHT said, “Instead of just supplying materials to make smartphones, automobiles, aircraft or submarines, we make investments in research and development (R&D) so that we can one day create practical consumer products for these key industries.”