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Nickel Investing
Top 3 ASX Nickel Stocks of 2025
Apr. 16, 2025 01:50PM PST
Which ASX-listed nickel companies are up the most so far in 2025, and what have they been up to this year? Find the answers here.
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With its diverse applications in both technology and industry, nickel is a metal that will never go out of style.
Nickel is commonly used in alloys to create stainless steel, but more recently has found a modern use: batteries. As the electric vehicle trend gains steam, the base metal is in high demand for its role in lithium-ion batteries.
Nickel has encountered much volatility in the past few years. After spiking to record highs in 2022, the nickel price has been on a downward trend on oversupply from top-producing country Indonesia and economic uncertainty dampening demand.
Tariffs could further disrupt the nickel market going forward, but whether that's to the upside or the downside remains to be seen.
Against that backdrop, some Australian nickel companies are still making moves. Here the Investing News Network has listed the top nickel stocks on the ASX by year-to-date gains. Data was gathered using TradingView's stock screener on April 9, 2025, and all companies had market caps above AU$5 million at that time. Read on to learn more about them.
1. Nordic Resources (ASX:NNL)
Year-to-date gain: 43.75 percent
Market cap: AU$17.51 million
Share price: AU$0.12
Nordic Resources is advancing exploration on its Pulju nickel-copper-cobalt project in Northern Finland, which hosts a near-surface JORC-compliant resource with the potential to produce class 1 nickel and battery materials for European markets.
The 2024 JORC mineral resource estimate is contained within the Hotinvaara deposit. The deposit hosts indicated resources of 42 million tonnes at 0.22 percent nickel for 92,700 tonnes of contained nickel, as well as inferred resources of 376 million tonnes at 0.21 percent nickel for 770,100 tonnes of contained nickel.
In January, Nordic picked up an additional three exploration licenses in the region to bring the size of the landholdings for the project to 46 square kilometres. This gives the company "full exploration rights over 12 kilometers of continuous strike within the known, mapped Mertavaara Formation."
Shares in Nordic Resources hit a year-to-date high of AU$0.12 on April 9, days before the company announced a large-scale acquisition of three Finnish gold projects.
2. Pivotal Metals (ASX:PVT)
Year-to-date gain: 42.86 percent
Market cap: AU$8.17 million
Share price: AU$0.010
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 mineralization.
Horden Lake hosts a JORC-compliant indicated and inferred mineral resource estimate of 27.8 million tonnes at 1.49 percent copper equivalent, comprising copper, nickel, palladium and gold.
Pivotal announced its 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 the company, 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 (FLTEM) survey at Horden Lake 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.
Step-out drilling at Horden was completed in early April and assay results are expected to be published in Q2 2025. Shares in Pivot started the year at AU$0.007 and hit a year-to-date high of AU$0.01 on April 9.
3. Ardea Resources (ASX:ARL)
Year-to-date gain: 7.94 percent
Market cap: AU$75.88 million
Share price: AU$0.365
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 towards a planned definitive feasibility study (DFS).
A 2023 prefeasibility study for the KNP Goongarrie Hub 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 Co. (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.
In its quarterly operations report for the quarter ended 31 December 2024, Ardea provided an update on the progress it's making toward completing the DFS. This includes bench-scale metallurgical testing, process plant development, geology and resource workflows. The news, released on January 28, helped boost the company's stock price by 14 percent to AU$0.40 per share on January 28.
The following month, Ardea announced that it had 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 the production of electrolytic nickel, nickel powder and nickel sulphate for the battery industry.
Shares in Ardea reached a year-to-date high of AU$0.48 on February 24.
Don’t forget to follow us @INN_Australia for real-time updates!
Securities Disclosure: I, Melissa Pistilli, hold no direct investment interest in any company mentioned in this article.
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