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History
More than 75 years of experience you can trust
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From research to consultancy
KEMA started life in 1927 as the Dutch electricity industry’s Arnhem-based test house. Originally just an abbreviation of the company’s full Dutch name, the letters K-E-M-A have since come to stand for much more than the testing of electrical equipment. While electrical safety testing and certification are still among KEMA’s core activities, today’s globally active company provides a host of independent applied research and consultancy services via an international network of subsidiaries and agencies. The consistent theme that unites these diverse activities is risk reduction. Almost all KEMA’s services involve the minimization of risk. Through the reduction of data communication errors and leaks, for example, or through the supervision of energy infrastructure restructuring projects in countries all over the globe. But equally through the testing of high-voltage equipment and the performance of short-circuit tests in the world’s largest short-circuit lab. Similarly, research into the quality of mobile telephone networks, testing equipment in environments with a raised explosion risk, and determining the residual service life of high-voltage lines, pylons and the like all demonstrate KEMA’s commitment to the reduction of risk.
The need for testing
In the early decades of the twentieth century, demand for electricity grew rapidly in the Netherlands. The result was a national program of electrification and the birth of a new industry: the electrical engineering industry. All over the country, factories and workshops sprang up, making cables and components for the burgeoning supply networks. Some of the fledgling industry’s products proved unreliable in use, however – the inevitable consequence of gaps in knowledge and the associated qualitative variability. Recognizing the need to have high-voltage equipment tested, VDEN – the organization that represented the power generators of the era – created its own testing division in 1924. Demand for testing grew so rapidly that just three years later it was decided that VDEN’s testing division should become an independent organization. So it was that in 1927, the NV tot Keuring van Elektrotechnische Materialen (‘the Electrical Engineering Equipment Testing Company’, soon to become known by the acronym ‘KEMA’) came into being. KEMA’s founders were provincial and large municipal authorities with their own electricity companies, plus a number of private power generators. Premises were found for the new company in an annex of the Hotel Bellevue on Utrechtseweg, one of Arnhem’s main thoroughfares.
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World-famous short-circuit lab
As the Netherlands’ electricity infrastructure continued to develop, KEMA grew with it. In 1930, the stockholders decided to build a short-circuit lab so that tests could be carried out at high voltages. A site was found on a former country estate called Den Brink, now part of the KEMA complex. Construction work began in the summer of 1933, only to come to an abrupt halt shortly afterwards, when the Ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water Management made it known that it would prefer to have KEMA based closer to the Technical University of Delft. It was a further three years before building work resumed, and in 1938 that the complex – a lab, workshops and storerooms – was finally opened by Prince (of the Netherlands) Bernhard. The facility’s electrical capacity was doubled in 1939, when construction of an R&D lab also began.
World War II
With the outbreak of hostilities in Europe came a shift in KEMA’s focus; in 1939 researchers turned their attention to issues such as vehicle lighting systems that were not readily visible from the air, and the regeneration of fuel oil from power plants. Germany’s occupation of the Netherlands the following year spelt an end to new investment. For some time, KEMA nevertheless continued to operate as before, albeit under the supervision of a German official. Research was carried out, for example, in preparation for the construction and set-up of a high-voltage line between Dordrecht-Rotterdam and Leiden-The Hague. Shortages of materials did, however, result in a scaling down of activities, and contacts with various parts of the world were severed. Towards the end of the war, as German forces sought to hold off the advancing allies, KEMA’s premises were requisitioned by the occupying army. The site was fortified and used as barracks by the Germans. When peace was re-established and KEMA returned, it was to a collection of badly damaged buildings stripped of machinery. After the war, recovery was rapid, with the volume of work exceeding its pre-war level as early as 1947. International contacts were resumed, and in '46 KEMA attended the first congress held by the still-active CIGRE (Conseil International des Grands Réseaux Electriques).
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Lab expansion
KEMA celebrated its silver jubilee in 1952 with the opening of its rebuilt laboratories by Finance Minister Professor J. Zijlstra. All the damage suffered in World War II had by then been repaired. Further lab expansions and increases in short-circuit power followed hard on each other’s heels, until by 1968 KEMA possessed the biggest short-circuit laboratory in the world. Yet the demand for tests at even higher powers continued to grow. So in 1969 work began on the construction of a completely new lab, still known today as ‘the world’s biggest short-circuit laboratory’. KEMA’s test facilities remain able to generate stronger electric currents that any comparable lab in the world. Four generators provide a combined capacity of 8400 megavolt-amps.
KEMA-KEUR
Familiar to almost everyone in the Netherlands, the KEMA-KEUR quality control mark is synonymous with safety. Contrary to popular belief, participation in the famous quality control scheme for electrical appliances is voluntary. Dating back to 1924, the system is intended as a way of showing that components and end products have passed appropriate safety tests based on international standards. The KEMA-KEUR mark reassures the consumer that a product is safe. European integration has removed the distinctions between national quality control organizations. Remarkably, however, the KEMA-KEUR remains an important selection criterion for consumers, and an equally important marketing tool for producers. In tandem with its sister organizations, KEMA is active in the provision of testing and certification services all over the world. Services which are by no means restricted any longer to household appliances. Testing and certification schemes have been developed by KEMA for organizations, businesses and individuals, as well as finished and semi-finished products.
Nuclear power
KEMA played a major role in the Netherlands’ nuclear power industry. In the 1950s and 60s, the Dutch were key actors in the international scientific community. KEMA was involved in construction of the experimental plant at Dodewaard and in countless other national and international projects. Since the mid-1990s, KEMA’s nuclear specialists have been operating within NRG, a joint venture between ECN and KEMA. Prince Bernhard opened the KEMA Nuclear Physics Laboratory in 1957. After Dodewaard, KEMA built another experimental reactor (the KEMA Suspension Test Reactor) on its own site. On 22 May 1974, the reactor was successfully started up, proving that KEMA’s concept was a safe way of generating nuclear power. Changes in national policy on nuclear power led to the project being wound up in 1977. After years of careful dismantling, the former nuclear reactor building was finally removed from the landscape of KEMA’s Arnhem Business Park in 2003.
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Organization and reorganization
When market principles displaced utility thinking, KEMA became an independent company. The annual research budget that the organization had always received from the utility companies came under pressure, obliging KEMA to look increasingly to the market. Initially, it did so with great success. Profit rises of more than 10 per cent a year were recorded, and division into business units in 1992 gave the organization considerable élan. However, the introduction of market forces to the Dutch energy sector led to a fall in demand; the country’s electricity infrastructure was complete and the era of construction and expansion had drawn to a close. In 1995, the tide began to turn and profitability suffered. Although KEMA was establishing itself in new markets and winning orders abroad, the income generated was not sufficient to compensate for losses on the domestic market. Finally, the organization was forced to start shedding staff. In November 1996, a hundred KEMA employees became the first in the organization’s seventy-year history to be told that their jobs were disappearing.
New challenges
The 1990s were characterized by diminishing government involvement in many walks of life. Regulatory controls were reduced and practical details left to individual organizations and their representative bodies. KEMA played an active part in these changes, as a partner and consultant, a knowledge center and an independent inspector. In the process, KEMA began to expand its horizons beyond the electrical engineering industry and to establish a presence on much larger global markets. Telecommunications, environmental management, quality management and power generation and distribution are just some of the fields in which KEMA possesses great expertise, for which demand is strong. Today, the company is active in these disciplines, not merely on the familiar territory of a protected domestic playing field, but throughout Europe’s liberalized internal market. As traditional barriers are removed and new players enter the fray, the challenge ahead for KEMA is to serve its existing clients in new fields and to win orders from the new market entrants.
Impartial outsider
Liberalization and heightened competition have made energy companies everywhere less technology-oriented and more commercial. Technology still matters, of course, but – more than ever before – its value has to be visible on the bottom line. KEMA therefore has to be able to demonstrate the financial significance of technology, to show where and how process efficiency and productivity can be increased. And, increasingly, KEMA acts as an independent quality inspector, assessor and project manager. Because energy companies retain less expertise in-house, contracting work out instead, they are in more need of an impartial outsider. So demand for the services of an outsider with integrity and expertise based on seventy-five years of experience can only grow in the current climate.
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