Accelerate finds broad visual manganese zone at Area 42

WNDD003 Extends Visual Mineralisation to End of Hole

Accelerate Resources Limited (ASX:AX8) has produced its most attention-grabbing result from a metallurgical drilling program at Area 42: hole WNDD003 logged multiple visual manganese zones across a 72m downhole span, from 5.6m to the 77.6m end of hole. The hole finished in mineralised chert breccia, leaving the depth extent of the mineralisation untested.

The result is encouraging in geological terms, but it is not an assay result. The reported intervals are based on preliminary visual logging, are measured downhole rather than as true widths, and do not establish manganese grade, impurity levels or recoveries. Accelerate said the longest individual visual zone in WNDD003 measured 24.4m from 21.3m, compared with a previously reported 13m interval grading 17.3% manganese in its twinned RC hole WNRC060. The company suggested the PQ3 core may have retained softer, powdery manganese that can be under-represented in RC cuttings, although that interpretation remains untested.

Visual manganese was also recorded in the two holes drilled at Dale’s Patch. WNDD001 intersected a 13m visual interval from 14.3m to 27.3m, while WNDD002 logged mineralisation from surface to 23.1m. Across the program, the three vertical PQ3 holes totalled 159m and twinned earlier RC holes, allowing the diamond core to be compared with previous drilling for geological continuity and eventual assay verification.

Core Testing Will Determine Product Potential

The immediate task is less about headline metres than what the core can produce. After detailed logging and pXRF analysis in Perth, Accelerate plans to divide the material into continuous six-to-12-metre composites designed to approximate material from individual mining benches. Nagrom will then test crushing, screening and beneficiation to assess lump and fines yields, manganese recovery, potential direct-shipping-ore parcels and the response of lower- and intermediate-grade material to dense media separation.

Selected core will also go to CSIRO for petrophysical and elemental work, including hardness testing, hyperspectral scanning, XRD, automated mineralogy, micro-XRF and scanning electron microscopy. Those results are intended to clarify the distribution of manganese, iron and other elements, as well as the relationship between manganese-rich and silica-rich zones. Until the laboratory work is complete, the photographs and visual estimates offer scale clues but little certainty on commercial product quality.

Area 42 forms part of Accelerate’s 432-square-kilometre Woodie Woodie North project, which carries an inferred resource of 1.2 million tonnes at 19.1% manganese at a 15% cut-off. Area 42 accounts for 0.7 million tonnes at 20.7% manganese in that estimate. The company is assessing a low-capital concept involving trucking ore to existing regional processing infrastructure, making the pending DSO and dense-media-separation results central to any technical assessment of that option.

Gingarrigan Drilling Adds a Second Near-Term Test

Attention will also shift south to Gingarrigan, where Accelerate has scheduled approximately 3,000m of maiden RC drilling for early October 2026. That program is separate from the Area 42 metallurgical work and is aimed at testing another target within Woodie Woodie North. The next meaningful evidence from the project should therefore come in two forms: laboratory and metallurgical data that put numbers around Area 42, and new drilling that tests whether the broader project can add to its existing resource base.