Nickel Industries says South Korea’s Sphere to buy 10% stake in Indonesian project

Australia’s Nickel Industries said on Friday that South Korea’s Sphere Corp would buy a 10% stake in the Excelsior Nickel Cobalt high-pressure acid leach (HPAL) project in Indonesia at a $2.4 billion valuation.

The South Korean materials manufacturer will acquire the stake from Hong Kong-based Decent Resource, while Nickel Industries will retain its 44% stake in the project, the Australian company said in a statement.

Sphere, a special alloy supplier to Elon Musk-led SpaceX, will offtake its 10% share of nickel as cathode material and has entered into an offtake agreement at market price for further volumes above its 10% ownership share.

The ENC HPAL project, being built in Indonesia’s Central Sulawesi, will be the first HPAL project worldwide with the capacity to produce three class-1 nickel products – mixed hydroxide precipitate (MHP), nickel sulphate, and nickel cathode, according to Nickel Industries’ website.

Shares of Nickel Industries were up as much as 9% by 23:40 GMT, and were the best performers on the S&P/ASX 200 benchmark index.

The deal comes amid soaring nickel prices as top producer Indonesia plans to cut mining output quotas to support commodity prices.

Nickel Industries expects the funding of the transaction to be completed early in the first quarter of 2026.

(By Nichiket Sunil; Editing by Chris Reese, Lincoln Feast and Rashmi Aich)