Kiwa Licensing was established in 2010 as a result of moving the major part of the licence-issuing organisation from the Human Environment & Transport Inspectorate to the private sector. Since taking over the activities from the government, Kiwa Licensing has been able to improve the service to end-users every year: delivery times have been shortened while the costs of the licence-issuing process for Dutch clients have been substantially reduced.
Kiwa Licensing is part of Kiwa N.V., a global leader in Testing, Inspection and Certification (TIC), with clients in the manufacturing and processing industries, (business) services, public and private utilities, governments and international institutions. Established in 1948, Kiwa employs over 4,500 people in more than 50 offices in over 40 countries across the world, mainly in Europe, Asia and Latin America. Kiwa generated Euro 500 million in revenue in 2016.
Kiwa helps government bodies (such as CAs) with the process of issuing formal licences to natural persons and companies. Since 2010 Kiwa has issued well over 700,000 licences to commercial airline pilots, air traffic control personnel, aircraft maintenance personnel, ship captains at sea and truck drivers on behalf of the Dutch government.
As subcontractor of the government or competent authority, Kiwa can take care of each step of the process involved in issuing licences: from information provision, customer contact and application intake, through to application review, the issuing of licences and the archiving of documents.
The licence-issuing activities of Kiwa are overseen and audited by EASA, EMSA, EU regulatory bodies and the Dutch government on a regular basis. In addition, Kiwa comes under the supervision of the British Standards Institute (BSI) for its ETSI and ISO qualifications.