Vietnam-focused Blackstone Minerals has invested C$3 million for a near-7% stake in Flying Nickel, an upcoming spin out from Silver Elephant Mining Corp and owner of the Minago sulphide project in Manitoba.

Minago is framed as a mine producing a nickel concentrate using hydroelectric power.

Blackstone has its own nickel concentrate plans in Vietnam but is also building a refinery to produce battery inputs with spare capacity.

Minago has nearly 500,000t of contained nickel in resources seen as potentially exploitable by open cut and underground mining, including 24 million tonnes of measured and indicated material grading 0.7% nickel that could be surface-mined.

As per standard, there is "district scale exploration potential".

Silver Elephant will vote on the proposed Flying Nickel spin-out next month.

Blackstone raised A$55 million earlier this month in a placement that priced new shares at 58c each.

Shares in Blackstone were down nearly 2% to 56.5c in afternoon trade, capitalising the company at $216 million.

The stock's low point in the past 12 months was 31.5c.