As supply chains, regulations, and brand expectations continue to shift, label and packaging buyers are prioritizing one thing above all: confidence. In “Certified to Compete,” Linda Casey outlines how third-party certifications are increasingly becoming a competitive necessity for converters because they reduce risk, streamline onboarding, and provide proof of capability, often helping brands avoid custom audits and paperwork-heavy evaluations.
A key theme is that certifications map directly to what brands value most today: safety, consistency, and repeatability. On the compliance side, the article highlights Safe Quality Food (SQF) as a globally recognized program that helps packaging suppliers demonstrate systems for contamination risk management, label accuracy, and material safety—especially important for converters serving food and beverage customers.
On print performance, the article features input from Jordan Gorski, vice president of Global Standards and Certifications at PRINTING United Alliance, who explains that growing interest in G7+ reflects modern print realities. Gorski emphasizes that G7+ provides printers with a calibration methodology that works across platforms, not limited to commercial print and traditional output technology, so teams can deliver consistent, accurate color regardless of substrate, press, or print technology. He also notes that this third-party validation can directly accelerate brand conversations: converters report that G7 or G7+ certification “shortens conversations about color alignment and performance expectations” because they’ve already proven conformance to a known industry standard.
The article explains how G7+ builds on the foundation of G7, gray balance and tonality, while being designed from the start for today’s mixed packaging environments, where flexo, digital, offset, gravure, and hybrid workflows often exist side by side. For brands, Gorski puts it plainly: Brands don’t care what press you used…they care that their output is accurate regardless, positioning G7+ as a shared calibration language that supports brand consistency across production realities.
One of the most production-relevant updates highlighted is high-density smoothing (HDS), a G7+ enhancement aimed at improving stability in high-coverage areas like rich blacks, dark gradients, and ink-heavy builds on difficult substrates such as films, foils, and coated boards. Gorski describes this as giving printers “more control and better visual consistency on every type of job,” with practical benefits including reduced makeready, improved proof-to-press alignment, and greater confidence in press-to-press consistency.
Finally, “Certified to Compete” underscores that certification is enabled by people and sustained by process. Outlining the G7+ Expert pathway (accessible training formats with recommended workflow knowledge) and the value of G7 Master Facility status as third-party proof that a site can maintain consistent output over time, useful not only for production teams, but also for sales teams, RFPs, and smoother customer onboarding and retention.
Certification provides operational tools that help converters improve consistency, reduce risk, and build trust with brands, partners, and employees in a market where predictability is increasingly the differentiator.