中文PRINTING United Alliance and AGFA will bring G7+ Expert live certification training to AGFA’s facility in Mortsel, Belgium, October 28-30, 2026. The three-day program is designed around experience-driven learning, combining lectures, open discussion, live press runs, print calibration, analysis and hands-on work using colour management tools. It is a concrete example of how international print organizations and equipment suppliers are collaborating to raise the global baseline of colour competence.
The agenda covers G7+ tonality and gray balance, calibration to G7 and G7+ specifications, verification and tolerances, process control, colour management, prepress workflows, extended gamut printing, and the G7 and G7+ Master programs. That breadth matters because consistent colour is no longer a niche prepress concern — it is a commercial requirement spanning brand packaging, cross-site production and multi-supplier supply chains. A printer that can demonstrably hold G7+ calibration is easier for brand owners to qualify and trust.
Participants receive downloadable production resources, G7+ test forms and access to an online training library. Early registrants also receive complimentary access to PRINTING United Alliance’s Color Management Professional Fundamentals training, extending the learning beyond the live event. The program is open to printers, press and prepress operators, designers, solution providers, brand managers, quality personnel, process engineers and Lean professionals. In-person attendance is required to earn certification, underlining that this is practical, demonstrable skill-building rather than a webinar badge.
For the European print market, hosting the training at AGFA’s Belgian headquarters is logical. AGFA remains a major supplier of plates, prepress and digital printing systems, and its Mortsel site offers the live press environment needed for credible hands-on calibration work. The partnership also reflects PRINTING United Alliance’s growing international footprint — G7+ methodology, originally rooted in North American printing standards, is now being delivered where European production actually happens.
The timing is notable. As extended gamut printing spreads — using fixed seven-colour or multi-colour sets to reproduce a wide colour range without frequent spot-ink changes — the need for rigorous calibration and verification grows. G7+ provides a structured path to predictable results across devices and sites, which is exactly what distributed manufacturing and brand consistency demand. Printers running multiple presses, or multiple plants, benefit most from a common calibration language.
From a business perspective, certified G7+ expertise is a differentiator. It shortens make-ready, reduces waste from colour rejects, and gives sales teams a credible story about quality control. In a margin-compressed market, those efficiencies compound. Training investment of this kind typically pays back through fewer reprints and smoother customer approvals.
The collaboration also signals a healthy trend: standards bodies, vendors and training providers working together to solve the industry’s skills gap. Rather than each company improvising its own colour doctrine, a shared, certified methodology raises everyone’s floor and makes cross-supplier work more reliable.
The decision to require in-person attendance for certification is a deliberate quality signal. Colour competence is physical: it is learned by calibrating a real press, reading a real test form, and seeing the difference between a tolerated and a failed result. Removing the option to passively watch online protects the value of the credential for those who earn it.
For the broader European market, the timing aligns with rising demand for extended gamut and multi-site consistency. As brands consolidate supplier lists and demand identical colour across regions, a shared, certified calibration methodology becomes a commercial necessity rather than a nicety. Training of this kind is how the industry scales that capability without relying on a handful of veteran experts.
Beyond the technical curriculum, the partnership model itself is worth noting. When a standards body and a major equipment supplier co-host training, the result is credentialing that carries weight with brand owners, not just with the attendees. That external validation is what makes G7+ certification more than a line on a brochure — it becomes a qualification requirement in procurement, which is where its commercial value truly compounds.
For printers serving multinational brands, the takeaway is to treat colour certification as a sales asset, not a cost. A certified workforce shortens approvals, reduces rejects and opens doors to accounts that screen suppliers on quality systems. In a market where differentiation is hard to sustain on price, demonstrable, third-party-recognized competence is one of the more durable advantages available.
In practical terms, the training also serves as a talent-development lever at a time when colour expertise is ageing out of the industry. Live, press-based certification rebuilds that knowledge in a standardized, teachable form, so competence no longer depends on a single veteran’s intuition. That institutionalization of craft is what allows quality to scale across sites and survive staff turnover.
For print owners, the lesson is to treat training as infrastructure rather than overhead. A certified, consistent colour process reduces make-ready time, cuts rejects and strengthens client trust — benefits that compound quarterly. Programs delivered by alliances and major suppliers carry the external credibility that internal training often lacks, making them among the highest-return investments a quality-focused printer can make.
