Nickel Mines Limited announced that the Company's 80%-owned Angel Nickel Project (`Angel Nickel' or `ANI') within the Indonesia Weda Bay Industrial Park (`IWIP') on Halmahera Island, has entered its commissioning phase with the first of its four RKEF lines having commenced nickel pig iron (`NPI') production. This maiden `NPI tap' occurred on 25 January and will see a further accelerated timetable where the Project's other three RKEF lines will be progressively commissioned over the following 60 to 90 days, resulting in all four RKEF lines anticipated to have commenced operations by the end of April 2022. The introduction of ANI will be transformative to the Company's existing operations, more than doubling annual attributable nickel metal nameplate capacity from 24.0kt to 52.8kt with the introduction of the Oracle Nickel Project (`ONI') by First Quarter 2023 set to further increase attributable nickel metal nameplate capacity to 78kt pa.

The ANI power plant is scheduled to commence commissioning by the end of September 2022 ahead of the October 2022 contractual delivery date, with the ANI project utilising power from the operating power plants within IWIP in the interim. During this period NPI production from ANI's RKEF lines will run at less than 100% of the 36,000 tonnes of nickel metal production nameplate capacity per annum depending on power availability. Full NPI production capacity is expected to be achieved around one month after the commissioning of the ANI power plant.

As with the Company's existing HNI and RNI projects, ANI will require the issuance of an Industrial Business Licence (Izin Usaha Industri) (`IUI') to commence commercial sales of NPI. Any NPI produced ahead of the IUI issuance will be stockpiled (as was the case with initial HNI and RNI sales) however it is presently anticipated ANI's IUI will be in place to allow first commercial sales to be recorded in early Second Quarter 2022.