Timelines vary significantly by licence type. Operational licences — food and beverage, alcohol, spa, entertainment, tourism — typically take 1–2 months from complete documentation. Industrial and product certification licences — factory, TISI, FDA, NBTC, hazardous substances — take 2–4 months and often involve site inspections or laboratory testing. Regulated financial licences — digital assets and e-payment — take 3–6 months and depend heavily on the applicant's compliance readiness. All timelines assume complete and correct documentation submitted at the first attempt — incomplete applications are returned and restart the review clock.

Yes — foreign-owned companies can obtain most Thai business licences. However, some licences have Thai ownership requirements, and some require the company to hold a Foreign Business Licence (FBL) or BOI promotion before the sector-specific licence can be issued. For example, some food and beverage operations and certain retail activities are restricted businesses under the Foreign Business Act, which means a foreign-majority company must hold an FBL before applying for the operating licence. We review your ownership structure at the start of the engagement to identify any prerequisites.

For most operational licences — food and beverage, alcohol, hotel, spa, entertainment — yes. These licences are issued per premises, not per company. Each physical location where the licensed activity is carried on requires its own separate licence application. If you operate a chain of restaurants with five locations, you need five food establishment licences and five alcohol licences. For product-related licences (TISI, FDA, NBTC), the licence covers the product itself rather than a specific location, so a single product registration covers sales across all your outlets. We can manage multi-location applications concurrently to minimise the overall timeline.

For some businesses, yes — certain licences are prerequisites for others. The most common sequence issue affects F&B and entertainment venues: the food establishment licence must be obtained before the alcohol licence can be applied for. For entertainment venues that also sell alcohol, the entertainment licence must typically be in place before the alcohol licence application. For hotel operations, building permits and fire safety certificates must be in place before the hotel licence application. We map the correct application sequence for your specific business at the start of the engagement to avoid situations where one application is stalled waiting for another.

Yes. Any business serving or selling alcoholic beverages — including restaurants, cafés, bars, hotels, and convenience stores — requires an alcohol licence from the Excise Department, regardless of whether alcohol is the main business activity. There is no minimum alcohol volume or sales threshold that exempts a venue. Selling alcohol without a licence is a criminal offence under the Liquor Act. The alcohol licence application requires a food establishment licence to already be in place, so these two applications need to be sequenced correctly. We manage both applications together as a coordinated process for F&B operators.

Thailand does not automatically accept CE marking, FDA approval, or other foreign certifications as a substitute for Thai registration. For FDA-regulated products, foreign approvals can sometimes be submitted as supporting evidence to speed up the Thai review, but a separate Thai FDA registration is still required. For TISI mandatory standards, the product must undergo Thai-standard testing even if it holds foreign certifications. For NBTC, foreign certifications (FCC, CE) can sometimes reduce testing requirements but do not replace the NBTC approval. We advise on the most efficient approach for your specific product and existing certifications.