Top 3 ASX Nickel Stocks of 2025

1. Pivotal Metals (ASX:PVT)

Year-to-date gain: 71.43 percent
Market cap: AU$9.98 million
Share price: AU$0.012

Pivotal Metals is an exploration and development-stage company has two properties in Québec, Canada: the Belleterre-Angliers Greenstone Belt (BAGB) project and its flagship advanced-exploration Horden Lake project. Both properties contain copper, nickel and platinum group metals mineralisation.

As of an April resource update, Horden Lake hosts a JORC-compliant indicated and inferred resource estimate of 407,000 tonnes of contained copper equivalent from 37 million tonnes of ore at 1.1 percent copper equivalent, which comprises copper, nickel, palladium, gold and more. Its contained nickel resource stands at 72,000 tonnes.

Pivotal announced 2025 field programs at both properties in February.

At Horden Lake, the company announced plans for 1,500 meters in diamond drilling along with the final stages of metallurgical test work to update the resource estimate. At BAGB, the company is assessing targets for its planned Q2 field program across three project areas. According to Pivotal, the "targets leverage extremely high-grade Ni-Cu-PGM from historical drilling on each project, as well as known high grade gold and VMS potential.

Shortly after, Pivotal announced that its fixed-loop time domain electromagnetic survey at Horden Lake had defined large undrilled conductors extending along strike and down plunge of the deposit.

The company released metallurgical test results from Horden Lake in March that demonstrated total copper recoveries of 87 to 94 percent with clean copper concentrates produced that grading 22 to 28 percent copper. In addition, the test work produced high-grade clean nickel concentrates grading approximately 12 percent nickel with the potential for nickel recoveries exceeding 50 percent at expected resource sulphur grades.

The new resource estimate discussed above raised Horden Lake's copper equivalent resource in a single pit shell to 341,000 tonnes, an increase of 37 percent over the previous estimate.

Shares of Pivot started the year at AU$0.007 and hit a year-to-date high of AU$0.012 twice, on June 16 and July 23.

2. Ardea Resources (ASX:ARL)

Year-to-date gain: 20.59 percent
Market cap: C$85.22 million
Share price: C$0.41

Ardea Resources is developing its wholly owned Kalgoorlie nickel project (KNP) in Western Australia, which includes the Goongarrie Hub deposit. The company has said the project “hosts the largest nickel-cobalt resource in the developed world.” It is currently working toward a planned definitive feasibility study (DFS).

A 2023 prefeasibility study shows an ore reserve of 194.1 million tonnes at 0.7 percent nickel and 0.05 percent cobalt, resulting in 1.36 million tonnes of contained nickel and 99,000 tonnes of contained cobalt. The study indicates an open-pit operation with a 40 year life and annual output of 30,000 tonnes of nickel and 2,000 tonnes of cobalt.

In February 2024, Ardea shared that Sumitomo Metal Mining (TSE:5713) and Mitsubishi (TSE:8058) had agreed on AU$98.5 million in funding and a scope of work for the KNP Goongarrie Hub DFS.

The DFS is slated for completion in the second half of 2025.

In its operations report for the December 2024 quarter, Ardea provided an update on DFS progress. This includes bench-scale metallurgical testing, process plant development, geology and resource workflows. The news, released on January 28, helped boost the company's share price by 14 percent to AU$0.40 per share on January 28.

The following month, Ardea awarded the hydrogen sulphide plant work package to engineering services firm Lycopodium. The plant will be used to precipitate mixed sulphide precipitate, which is a high-purity nickel and cobalt sulphide product. MHP is a precursor for electrolytic nickel, nickel powder and nickel sulphate for the battery industry.

Ardea shared an update on the work being done towards the DFS on June 23, including the completion of a drill program and further progress on the processing plant.

On July 4, Ardea announced that the consortium of Sumitomo and Mitsubishi had reached 50 percent of the AU$98.5 million in funding, a milestone that earned them a 17.5 percent interest in the KNP.

Shares of Ardea reached a year-to-date high of AU$0.48 on February 24.

3. IGO (ASX:IGO)

Year-to-date gain: 12.37 percent
Market cap: C$3.94 billion
Share price: C$5.36

IGO is a diversified metals producer, but its main focus is on its wholly owned Nova nickel-copper-cobalt operation, which is located in Western Australia's Fraser Range and primarily produces nickel.

IGO also owns two other nickel operations, Forrestania and Cosmos, which were placed on care and maintenance in 2024. The company is maintaining the option to restart operations based on the nickel market's performance.

IGO also has a 49 percent interest in the Tianqi Lithium Energy Australia joint venture with Tianqi Lithium (SZSE:002466,HKEX:9696). The joint venture holds a 51 percent interest in the Greenbushes lithium mine, which is also located in Western Australia.

The company's report for its third fiscal quarter of 2025 highlights nickel production from Nova of 4,179 tonnes, up 23 percent from the previous quarter on improved mining volumes, grades and plant availability. According to the release, the planned life of mine is nearing its end, with final production expected in late 2026.

Shares of IGO hit a year-to-date high of AU$5.36 on July 23.