The Nickel Industries Ltd (ASX: NIC) share price is up and away again during early Tuesday afternoon trading.
This comes after the company announced this week that its 80%-owned Angel Nickel power plant has started commissioning.
At the time of writing, the nickel producer's shares are up 2.91% to $1.06 each. This means the company's shares have gained 6% since Friday's market close and 13% in the last week.
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What's charging Nickel Industries shares forward?
In yesterday's announcement, Nickel Industries advised its 380-megawatt power plant within the Indonesia Weda Bay Industrial Park is now online.
The news seemed to appease investors which led the Nickel Industries share price to climb 3% for the day.
In comparison, the S&P/ASX 200 Index (ASX: XJO) fell slightly by 0.02%.
Nickel Industries stated that the commissioning of the power plant is currently ahead of schedule. This follows the early commissioning of the project's 4 RKEF lines between January to May this year. This was originally projected for October 2022.
Angel Nickel has been operating at around 80% of nameplate capacity because of power restrictions within the IWIP electricity grid. However, with its own power source now available to tap into, production levels are expected to increase to approximately 130% of nameplate capacity.
Furthermore, Angel Nickel's four RKEF lines are estimated to save around 20% on electricity charges. These lines account for roughly 25% of total operating cash costs.
Nickel is a key component in lithium-ion batteries, which are used in generating power for electric vehicles. The silvery-white metal is able to produce a lot more energy into batteries than cobalt. On top of that, cobalt is considered a more expensive metal and has fewer purposes across industries.
Nickel Industries' managing director Justin Werner commented:
The early commissioning of the Angel RKEF lines more than 6 months ahead of schedule allowed us to significantly bring forward nickel production. With Angel's power plant now commissioned this should allow us to ramp up to approximately 130% of name plate capacity, which will greatly increase nickel metal production and assist to materially decrease Angel operating costs.
Nickel Industries share price snapshot
After zipping to an all-time high of US$43,000 per tonne in mid-March, the price of nickel has spectacularly erased its historic gains.
Subsequently, this impacted the Nickel Industries share price which fell to a 52-week low of 88.5 cents on 15 July.
Year to date, the company's shares are down 25%.
Nickel Industries has a price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of 12.56 and commands a market capitalisation of roughly $2.89 billion.
