Blackstone Completes Vietnamese Studies for Ta Khoa Refinery

Blackstone Minerals Limited (“Blackstone”) is pleased to announce the completion of key Vietnamese studies and commencement of early contractor engagement for the Ta Khoa Refinery (“TKR”) Definitive Feasibility Study (“DFS”).

Blackstone recognises the importance of engaging local contractors to enhance project value as they have deep understanding of the Vietnamese business landscape, local culture, and expertise in their respective fields. Local contractors have played a pivotal role in the development of the Company’s Refinery DFS and will continue to play a major role in expediting construction and permitting timelines, ensuring the Project is ‘Vietnam-ready’, locking-in highly competitive local pricing and contributing to the overall Project success.

Figure 1: Ta Khoa Refinery DFS Partners

Recently a Vietnam visit was conducted to coordinate parties to confirm DFS study progress and advance early engagement activities. The companies visited were:

• Narime – plant and non-process infrastructure engineering and design
• Early engagement of fabricators and construction contractors
• Scan Global Logistics – logistics study for both construction and operational phases
• Tedi Wecco – port engineering and design
• Hong Ha – access road upgrade and design
• Global Green Energy Consulting – power infrastructure engineering and design
• Vimluki – environmental impact assessment
• DRCC – social and economic baseline assessment

Narime continue to assist globally renowned Wood, acting as lead in-country engineering consultant, in the development of the Ta Khoa Refinery DFS. Narime bring a wealth of local knowledge and experience to the DFS, supporting Wood with design and local pricing. The quality of work from Narime has exceeded Wood’s and Blackstone’s expectations, allowing for a greater level of accuracy of engineering, thus reducing project risk and future engineering scope. Blackstone looks forward to future engagement with Narime to leverage off their innate local knowledge of construction, fabricators, material availability, labour rates, and project management techniques.

Blackstone has commenced early engagement of Vietnamese fabricators and contractors. In a recent site visit to Vietnam, the Blackstone team visited some of the largest fabrication companies and facilities in the world, each with a diverse client base ranging from thermal power plants, oil and gas, refining, cement and steel fabrication plants in Asia, Europe, the US, and Australia. A sample of their client base is given in Figure 2. All companies fabricate to international standards and are ISO accredited. Blackstone will continue to investigate in-country fabricators and constructors to ensure Vietnamese pricing is captured during the Ta Khoa Project procurement process.

Figure 2: Early Engagement Fabricator and Contractor Client Base

Scan Global Logistics was selected to complete the logistics study for the DFS. Significant effort was placed in reviewing several options for both the construction and operational logistics phases of the Project. Figure 3 shows the proposed route from ocean port to site. International transport will be received at the Hai Phong port where it will be transported on major highways to the Hoa Binh Port. Material from this point will be barged on Da River between Hoa Binh to dedicated ports at the Ta Khoa Refinery and Ta Khoa Nickel mine sites. This route will maximise the flexibility of loads during construction and operation while limiting the requirement of road networks, thus reducing local community impact, and reducing CAPEX for road upgrades.

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