Until the end of November 2023, all certification bodies carrying out this third-party certification had to be UKAS (United Kingdom Accreditation Service) accredited.

But the BPIF said that as of 1 December 2023, the organisation has taken over this function using a subcommittee of the BPIF Colour Management Scheme’s working group to oversee the management of the certification bodies and the yearly audit of these bodies.

“The reason for this change is to control costs of certification and open up the certification to other BPIF approved third-party certifiers,” it stated.

“Only accredited certification bodies may perform certification for the scheme, and under the conditions shown in Part 4 of the Colour Quality Scheme’s current Requirements for Certification document, Version 3 November 2017.”

The BPIF said the introduction, and section 4.1, will now read: “Only accredited certification bodies by the BPIF may perform certification for the scheme, and under the conditions shown in this section.

“All certification bodies shall be accredited as follows: specifically for this scheme the BPIF and its BPIF Colour Quality Management Certification Scheme accreditation subcommittee will carry the accreditation process for all third-party certifiers wishing to certify organisations to the BPIF Colour Quality Management Certification Scheme.”

Current certificates for holders of the BPIF Colour Quality Management Scheme will be reissued to show the change from UKAS accreditation to the BPIF. Other than this, the requirements of the scheme remain the same.

Version 4 of the Colour Quality Scheme will be released next year when the current major revisions to ISO 12647-2 should be complete and published.

This document will contain the above changes to the accreditation process and reflect the changes within the new version of ISO 12647-2 which affect the scheme.