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cess to bring people into Vietnam, howev- batteries on track for completion this quar-
er, uncertainty on border closures and the ter.
need to compete with blue chip miners on In the meantime, the discovery success
remuneration was making things difficult. continues for Blackstone with a new zone
Williamson said the company was set to of nickel mineralisation coincident with EM
lose a couple of geologists from its stable, plates at the Viper discovery zone (VDZ),
as a result of COVID-related restrictions east of Ban Chang, announced recently.
preventing the renewal of international vi- At the time of print, Blackstone had a
sas for some of its people. market capitalisation of $112 million and
“Vietnam has strict border controls simi- share price of 43c/share and while Wil-
lar to WA, so we are trying to get people liamson sees much more upside in the
from WA into an even stricter regime over company’s valuation, overall he feels ex-
there. We’re lucky we have an expat over plorers are starting to see some apprecia-
there in the vendor, but the tightness for la- tion for their efforts.
bour… that adds to cost,” Williamson said. “We’re in a situation where finally the ex-
“I am already thinking about what ros- plorer gets valued much closer to fair value
ters, environment and what incentives we than at any time in the past 10 years,” Wil-
should put people on because we are go- liamson said.
ing into a scenario again where there are “We’re in a market where we are being
Scott Williamson
no good skilled people; there is a fight for rewarded for news flow and any news is
compete with people like that [the miners],” talent. good news. I’ve had a couple long hard
he said. “It is happening already, and it is a bit of debates with my chairman about whether
Although Blackstone Minerals Ltd is a worry. We are lucky that in Vietnam there we should put out an announcement or
making its way in the nickel sector in an- is an established mining industry so from not, as the latest announcement mightn’t
other part of the world – Vietnam – manag- a local perspective we’re OK but trying to be as good as the last one. My view is to
ing director Scott Williamson is feeling the find good expats is going to be very hard,” get the announcement out, any news is
same pain in trying to attract talent to the he said. good news and finally we are in that mar-
company as it looks towards a restart of Blackstone continues to forge ahead ket where the explorers are being valued.”
nickel operations at Ta Khoa. with a maiden resource at Ta Khoa and – Mark Andrews
Williamson told Paydirt Blackstone was scoping study on downstream processing
currently undergoing a recruitment pro- to produce nickel sulphate for lithium-ion

aUSTRaLIa’S PaYDIRT OCTOBeR 2020 Page 93