The VALMIN Code is the Australasian standard governing public reporting of mineral asset valuations and Independent Expert Reports, jointly administered by AusIMM and the Australian Institute of Geoscientists. The current 2015 Edition took effect 30 January 2016 and became mandatory for AusIMM and AIG members from 1 July 2016, and it works alongside the JORC Code rather than replacing it.
The VALMIN Code (formally the Australasian Code for Public Reporting of Technical Assessments and Valuations of Mineral Assets) is the professional standard that governs how mineral asset valuations and Independent Expert Reports are prepared and publicly disclosed in Australia and New Zealand. It is issued jointly by The Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy (AusIMM) and the Australian Institute of Geoscientists (AIG), with input from the Minerals Council of Australia. It sets out three fundamental Principles (Competence, Materiality, and Transparency), plus two additional requirements (Reasonableness and Independence), that a Practitioner must satisfy before a valuation opinion can be released to the market.
The current edition is the VALMIN Code 2015 Edition. It became effective 30 January 2016 and mandatory for AusIMM and AIG members from 1 July 2016, replacing the 2005 edition after a six-month transition window in which either edition could be used. There have been four editions in total: 1995, 1998, 2005, and 2015. A further revision is expected to follow the next update of the JORC Code, but as of this writing no new edition has been released.
VALMIN and JORC cover different stages of the same reporting chain and are meant to be read together, not chosen between. The JORC Code (2012 Edition) governs how Exploration Results, Mineral Resources, and Ore Reserves are estimated, classified, and publicly reported. VALMIN governs what happens next: the Technical Assessment of those results and the Valuation of the Mineral Asset itself, including the Independent Expert Report that a board or bidder relies on in a transaction. A Valuation Report cannot be produced in isolation from JORC because Clause 8.5 of the VALMIN Code requires that all Ore Reserves and Mineral Resources be considered, and it is generally acceptable to use Proved and Probable Ore Reserves in an Income Approach once the Reasonable Grounds Requirement is met.
The practical distinction: a Competent Person under JORC signs off on tonnes, grade, and category. A Practitioner under VALMIN (a Specialist or Securities Expert) signs off on what that resource or reserve is worth, and does so under a stricter Independence and disclosure regime than JORC itself requires. Reports lodged with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) must comply with both codes, and the ASX Listing Rules (Chapter 5) incorporate JORC directly, but compliance with JORC and/or VALMIN does not by itself guarantee compliance with the Corporations Act or the Listing Rules more broadly. For a wider view of how VALMIN sits inside the family of national valuation and reporting codes, see the CRIRSCO codes by country overview.
Compliance is mandatory for members of AusIMM and AIG, and members of other Recognised Professional Organisations with an enforceable Code of Ethics may be bound by VALMIN or a compatible code. AIG and AusIMM Members must adhere to the VALMIN Code regardless of where the Public Report is prepared or where the Mineral Asset itself is located, subject to the scope carve-out in Clause 1.3. The Code is written from a Minerals perspective; for petroleum assets it is offered as guidance only, with Chapter 5 of the ASX Listing Rules and the SPE Petroleum Resources Management System governing mandatory reporting instead.
The VALMIN Code sits inside a broader regulatory chain: the Corporations Act 2001 sets the underlying law, ASIC Regulatory Guides (notably RG 111 on the content of expert reports and RG 112 on the independence of experts) interpret it, and the ASX Listing Rules apply it to listed entities, with Chapter 5 pulling in the JORC Code for resource and reserve disclosure. VALMIN is described in its own preface as broadly consistent in principle with comparable international codes and templates, including SAMVAL (South Africa), CIMVal (Canada), the CRIRSCO template, and the IMVAL International Mineral Valuation Standards template, though a Practitioner working outside Australia is expected to know the specific content of whichever local code applies.
A Practitioner is the VALMIN Code's collective term for the Expert (as defined in the Corporations Act) who prepares a Public Report on a Technical Assessment or Valuation. Two categories exist. A Specialist has the technical discipline (geology, mine engineering, metallurgy) to assess or value the Mineral Asset itself; a Securities Expert has the authority to assess or value the related Securities. The same person may hold both roles where the Code's competence criteria are met, and where a Specialist signs a Technical Assessment and/or Valuation for an Independent Expert Report, that document is called the Specialist Report.
The experience bar is set out in Clause 2.2 and is materially higher than the equivalent JORC Competent Person threshold:
| Requirement | Detail |
|---|---|
| Technical Assessment experience | At least 5 years' recent and relevant experience in the specific Mineral Asset type being assessed |
| Valuation experience | At least 5 additional years (10 years total) of recent and relevant experience valuing Mineral Assets, only required where a Valuation, not just a Technical Assessment, is being prepared |
| Membership | Member of a Professional Organisation with an enforceable Code of Ethics; understands that a VALMIN breach can trigger a disciplinary investigation |
| Familiarity | Working knowledge of the VALMIN Code, the JORC Code, relevant Corporations Act provisions, ASIC and ASX policy, and relevant court decisions |
The Code adds a stage-matching rule that is easy to miss: relevant experience must match the development status of the asset being reported on. A Specialist valuing an Early-Stage or Advanced Exploration Project must have experience specifically in Technical Assessment and Valuation of assets at that status, and the same applies at Pre-Development status and beyond. Ten years of open-pit gold valuation experience does not, on its own, qualify a Practitioner to value a grass-roots lithium exploration tenement.
VALMIN recognises three widely accepted Valuation Approaches, each built on a different underlying rationale, and Clause 8.2 is explicit that choosing between them is the Practitioner's sole responsibility, not the Commissioning Entity's:
The Code also distinguishes two bases of value that a Public Report must disclose. Technical Value is the Practitioner's assessment of an asset's future net economic benefit, excluding any premium or discount for market considerations (broadly equivalent to the IVSC term Investment Value). Market Value is the price a willing buyer and willing seller would agree in an arm's length transaction, after appropriate marketing, with both parties acting knowledgeably, prudently, and without compulsion. Market Value can sit above or below Technical Value, and where the two diverge the Public Report must say why.
Clause 8.3 gives a general guide to which approach is applicable at which point in a project's life, reproduced in Table 1 of the Code:
| Valuation Approach | Exploration Projects | Pre-development Projects | Development Projects | Production Projects |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Market | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Income | No | In some cases | Yes | Yes |
| Cost | Yes | In some cases | No | No |
The logic: at exploration stage there is no reliable cash flow to discount, so Income is out and the asset is valued on comparable transactions (Market) or historical spend (Cost). By Development and Production stage, a bankable feasibility study or operating history supports discounted cash flow, so Income becomes usable and Cost stops being informative because sunk cost no longer reflects what the asset is worth. VALMIN requires at least two Valuation Approaches to be used and cross-checked wherever practical; using a single approach without clearly and unambiguously explaining why the other is impractical is itself a breach of Clause 8.3.
The Corporations Act 2001 (Cth) is the primary legislation behind the VALMIN Code. ASIC Regulatory Guides then interpret how that law applies to Public Reports, most relevantly RG 111 (content of expert reports), RG 112 (independence of experts), RG 55 (consent to quote), RG 170 (prospective financial information), RG 228 (prospectus disclosure for retail investors), and RG 230 (non-IFRS financial information). The ASX Listing Rules set the requirements for companies listed on the exchange, and Chapter 5 of those rules incorporates the JORC Code directly, making it binding on any AIG or AusIMM member reporting Exploration Results, Mineral Resources, or Ore Reserves for a listed entity.
An Independent Expert Report is a specific category of Public Report that may be required under the Corporations Act, the ASX Listing Rules, or another recognised securities exchange, most commonly for compulsory acquisitions, related-party transactions, public floats, fairness and reasonableness opinions under RG 111, debt or equity raisings, or litigation. A report only qualifies as independent when the Practitioner is both independent of the Commissioning Entity in fact and acknowledged as such by that entity. Where an Independent Expert Report needs a Technical Assessment or Valuation of Mineral Assets, that component, the Specialist Report, must be prepared by a Specialist rather than by the Securities Expert overseeing the broader opinion.
Most VALMIN non-compliance findings trace back to a small set of recurring gaps, all of which map directly onto mandatory clauses in the Code:
Check three things first: the Basis of Value used (Technical Value or Market Value, and why), how many Valuation Approaches were applied and whether Table 1's stage guidance was followed, and whether the Practitioner's Independence was confirmed in writing by the Commissioning Entity rather than merely assumed.
A VALMIN valuation is only as reliable as the Technical Assessment underneath it, which in turn depends on clean, defensible Mineral Resource and Ore Reserve data. For legacy Soviet-era deposits, that means correctly converting old A/B/C1/C2/P category estimates into a CRIRSCO-aligned framework before any Market, Income, or Cost approach can be applied to them; the same conversion challenge shows up wherever a project sits on a former Soviet GKZ or KazRC reporting base. CoreElement AI, a mineral-data platform founded in 2024, includes a Soviet GKZ conversion module (OCR, Pulkovo 1942 to WGS-84 reprojection, and category mapping) alongside reporting modules for JORC 2012, NI 43-101, KAZRC, SAMREC, PERC 2021, and S-K 1300, so digitised historical resource data can be traced into whichever code a Practitioner is valuing against. See the SK-1300 vs JORC comparison for how the same conversion logic applies to US-reported assets.