Privacy Policy
Latest update 30 May 2018
We care about your personal data and we want you to trust that Continental Foods uses your personal data carefully. This Privacy Policy will help you understand what personal data we collect, why we collect it and what we do with it.
As you read our Privacy Policy, please keep in mind that it applies to all Continental Foods Group companies as defined below.
1 Who are we?
This Privacy Policy applies to personal data collected by Continental Foods in connection with the services and products we offer. References to “Continental Foods”, “we”, “us” or “our” in this Privacy Policy include each and all of the following entities of our group, established in five jurisdictions throughout Europe:
| Belgium
(head office and main establishment) |
Continental Foods Belgium NV
BE 0458.358.850 Rijksweg 16 B – 2870 Puurs BELGIUM |
| France | Continental Foods France SAS
63 bis, Rue de Sèvres F – 92514 Boulogne Billancourt FRANCE Continental Foods Production France SAS 1420 Route de Carpentras CS 80018 Le Pontet 84275 Vedène Cedex FRANCE Destombes SAS ZI de l’Alouette – Rue Gutenberg 62800 Liévin FRANCE Destombes Production SAS ZI de l’Alouette – Rue Gutenberg 62800 Liévin FRANCE |
| Germany | Continental Foods Germany GmbH
Geniner Strasse 88-100 D – 23560 Lübeck GERMANY Continental Foods Production Germany GmbH Geniner Strasse 88-100 D – 23560 Lübeck GERMANY |
| Finland | Continental Foods Finland Oy
Tammiston kauppatie 7 B FI-01510 Vantaa FINLAND |
| Sweden | Continental Foods Sweden AB
Scheelevägen 30 SE – 223 63 Lund SWEDEN |
In the context of our activities (the production and sale of foodstuffs such as noodles, soups, juices, bouillons, vinegar, cold and warm sauces, dessert mixes, etc. via retail partners and other sales channels, as well as the follow-up and the provision of aftersales services) we collect, hold, disclose and/or otherwise process personal data. Pursuant to the applicable data protection and privacy legislation, the entities listed above each qualify as the data controller with respect to the personal data they collect in the context of their local activities. In specific cases, they are joint controller with another group entity. For some group-wide functions, such as procurement and legal, Continental Foods Belgium is the data controller.
For the German establishments, we have appointed a Data Protection Officer. If you have any questions regarding our German data processing activities, you can reach the Data Protection Officer as follows: datenschutzbeauftragter@continentalfoods.eu or Tel. +49 451 5306-0.
2 What is the importance of this Privacy Policy?
We value your right to privacy and make every effort to protect your personal data in accordance with applicable data protection legislation and more specifically with the General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”) and the applicable national data protection legislation.
In this Privacy Policy we set forth how we collect your personal data, how and for which purposes we may use your personal data and to whom your personal data may be disclosed by us.
Further, this Privacy Policy includes important information regarding your rights with respect to the processing of your personal data. Therefore, we encourage you to read this Privacy Policy carefully.
From time to time, we may need to change this Privacy Policy. The most recent version of this Privacy Policy is at all times available on our general websites and our product websites.
Attention: By sharing your personal data with us, we expect that you read this Privacy Policy carefully. We are committed to process your personal data in full compliance with the requirements of the GDPR. We ensure optimal protection of our databases and will allow you easy insight into your data and adjustment or removal of data on simple request. Please be aware that for certain processing of your personal data we will need to ask your consent (e.g. if we want to send you a newsletter or use tracking cookies). For other types of processing, the law provides us other legal grounds.
3 Whose personal data do we collect?
In the context of our business (as described above), we process personal data of professional customers, retailers or consumers who buy or use our products, of respondents who take part in our market research initiatives or surveys, of participants to our prize contests, of visitors of our premises, visitors of our websites, journalists, contact persons at administrative authorities, and of persons who otherwise come into contact with us (e.g. because their name and contact details as employee or director of our customers, suppliers and other commercial partners are provided to us).
4 How do we collect personal data?
We collect your personal data in various ways:
directly from you when you provide us with your personal data in the context of our commercial activities;- directly from you in the context of contractual negotiations or the conclusion of an agreement;
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directly from you when you provide us your personal data when entering our premises; - directly from you when you take part in a market research or survey conducted by us;
- directly from you when you participate in a contest organised by us;
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directly from you when you register on our websites, when you navigate our website(s), when you complete a contact form on our website(s), when you register for our electronic newsletter, or when you buy a product at our web shops; - directly from you when you provide us with your personal data in the context of investigations/claims with respect to food labelling, product recalls;
- via our external call center when you provide your personal data to them in the context of a question or complaint;
- via third parties and official sources (such as the Graydon database for credit checks
, databases or mailings lists provided to us by retailers or other commercial partners, public databases of journalists or via our service providers); - via your employer with whom we have a contract or partnership (e.g. when you act as a contact person of our customers, suppliers or commercial partners).
5 What personal data do we collect?
We may collect the following personal data about you insofar as this information is relevant for the purposes for which we need it, as explained under title 6 below. Anytime certain information is mandatory and other information is optional, this shall be clearly indicated as such, so that you can choose whether or not to provide us such information.
| Identification and contact information | Personal identification data: name, address, telephone/mobile number, email address (and where appropriate passwords and account information of persons registering at our web shops) |
| Electronic identification data: IP addresses, information collected via cookies (read our Cookie Policy) | |
| Financial information | Identification data and bank account numbers |
| Financial transactions: amounts that you have to pay and have paid, overview of the payments, etc. | |
| Agreements and settlements | |
| Personal characteristics | Personal characteristics: sex, birth date, nationality, language preference |
| Lifestyle and habits | Consumption behavior, lifestyle, social contacts, possessions, use of social media |
| Complaints | Complaints, incidents or accidents |
| Family composition | Marriage or living situation |
| Information on family members | |
| Leisure and hobbies | Leisure activities and hobbies |
| Profession and employment | Profession and employment information (individual or company, where appropriate VAT number) |
| Career | |
| Image recordings | Images of security cameras
Video recordings via social media / in the context of contests organised by us |
| Sound recordings | Telephone recordings by our external call center |
| Sound recordings via social media / in the context of contests organised by us | |
| Other categories of data | Your purchase intentions and interests |
6 For what purposes do we use your personal data?
We use personal data for the following purposes:
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- for the management of (invoice) disputes and claims,
- for the handling of consumer inquiries and complaints,
- for public relations purposes,
- for the management of our website(s),
- to provide you with information requested by you, for example:
- to contact you with respect to our product offering,
- to answer a question,
- to keep you informed of possible prizes after participating in a contest,
- to comply with legal obligations (e.g. with respect to legal or commercial product warranties or product recalls),
- for contact purposes in the context of our aftersales services,
- for security and access control of our premises,
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for marketing purposes, either for our paper mailings or for our electronic mailings (if you had subscribed to them).
For your perfect information, you can find hereinafter the legal grounds applicable to these processing activities:
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for the processing of your personal data for the delivery of products and for the follow-up on sales and invoicing, to provide you with certain information with respect to purchased products, or in the context of customer complaint handling, we rely upon the necessity for the performance of a contract, - for the processing of your personal data in the context of the follow-up on product warranties and food and product safety, we rely upon the necessity for compliance with our legal obligations as a foodstuff producer,
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in all other cases, the processing of your personal data is based on our legitimate business / commercial interests (i.e. the interest of contacting prospects and possible customers, of informing consumers and partners of our product offering and to promote our business in general, both online and offline
, and the interest of obtaining information about buying behavior, preferences and purchase intentions of clients in order to establish marketing strategies), - for the processing of your personal data for electronic direct marketing purposes (tracking and analyzing your interests, sending our electronic newsletter), we rely upon your opt-in consent. Only if you have unambiguously stated that you would like to receive our electronic newsletter (you are entirely free to do this), we will register you for our electronic mailings.
Note that you have the right to withdraw that consent at any time, free of charge, and without this having any negative implications for you. You may do so by e-mail (see below) or via the opt-out link included in each of our marketing mailings.
7 With whom do we share your personal data?
With our service providers (‘processors’):
In the context of our activities as described above, we may share your personal data with third parties, in particular with service providers (IT/cloud service providers, PR/marketing agencies who organise mailing campaigns for us, sales service providers or creative agencies) that act as our ‘processors’.
Within our group of undertakings:
We may also share your personal data within our group of undertakings. Note that we have affiliates in the following countries: France, Germany, Finland and Sweden (all located within the European Economic Area and offering adequate protection of your personal data).
With our external law firms:
Further, we may share your personal data with law firms in case of (threatened) litigation.
With government authorities:
Finally, we may share your personal data with the government, police authorities or the judiciary in case we have a legal obligation to do so (e.g. providing access to camera recordings by government authorities and to the police upon request).
We will implement appropriate safeguards when transferring your personal data to third parties. If necessary, we will for example conclude a data transfer or a processing agreement specifying the limitations to the use of your personal data and the obligations with respect to the security of your personal data.
Your personal data and your profile will not be lent or sold to third parties for marketing purposes without your prior explicit consent.
We also use Google Analytics to help us offer you an optimised user experience. In that regard, your personal data may be transferred to countries outside the European Economic Area. You can find more information about this here: https://policies.google.com/privacy?hl=en.
If other of our processors are transferring personal data to recipients located in countries outside the EEA, it shall be ensured that adequate measures are taken to ensure the protection of your personal data in accordance with applicable data protection legislation. More specifically, we have signed standard contractual clauses with our call center software provider Wilke Global to legitimise the transfer of personal data to the US.
How long do we store your personal data?
Your personal data will not be stored for longer than is necessary in relation to the purposes for which we process them (as listed above). Afterwards it is still possible that they can be found in our back-ups or archives, but they will no longer be actively processed in a file.
More specifically, the following retention guidelines are applied by us:
personal data included in accounting, financial or other official documents will be retained for as long as such documents legally need to be kept,
personal data required for the execution and follow-up of a contractual relationship will be kept for the entire duration of that relationship and for 10 years following termination thereof,
personal data obtained in the context of complaint handling will be deleted (or anonymised) as soon as the complaint is closed, and
any personal data used for marketing purposes will be retained for as long as we are sending you relevant mailings and for a maximum of 1,5 years thereafter. As soon as we note that your contact details are no longer accurate or active, or whenever you decide to use your unsubscribe right, we will no longer keep your personal data for these purposes.
Only where we are legally obliged to, or where this is necessary for defending our interests in the context of judicial proceedings (e.g. in case of a dispute), we will store the personal data for longer periods.
More information on our retention periods is available upon simple request.
8 How do we protect your personal data?
We will implement the necessary administrative, technical and organisational measures for ensuring a level of security appropriate to the specific risks that we have identified.
We protect your personal data against destruction, loss, alteration, unauthorised disclosure of or access to personal data transmitted, stored or otherwise processed.
Further, we seek to ensure that we keep your personal data accurate and up to date. In view thereof, we kindly request you to inform us of any changes to your personal data (such as a change in your contact details).
More information on our protection measures is available upon simple request.
9 What are your rights and how can you exercise them?
Within the limits defined by articles 15-22 of the GDPR, you have the statutory right to:
- receive information about and access your personal data;
- rectify your personal data;
- erasure of your personal data (‘right to be forgotten’);
- request restriction of processing of your personal data;
- object to the processing of your personal data;
- receive your personal data in a structured, commonly used and machine readable format and to (have) transmit(ted) your personal data to another organisation.
Finally, you have the right to lodge a complaint relating to the processing of your personal data by us with the data protection authority in your country.
To read more about these rights, and circumstances under which you can use these rights, in particular your right to object (this is your ‘opt-out’ right for our electronic newsletter), please also read the Annex to this Privacy Policy. In principle you may exercise these rights free of charge. Only where requests are manifestly unfounded or excessive we may charge a reasonable fee.
Further information and advice about your rights can also be obtained from the data protection authority in your country.
We aim to respond as quickly as possible to your requests or questions. We might request a proof of identity in advance in order to double-check your request.
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If you have any questions or concerns about Continental Foods’ Privacy Policy or the processing of your personal data by us, please feel free to contact us by sending an e-mail or submitting a request through the contact form on our websites or by writing to the address mentioned under Section 1 above.
Annex – More information about your rights as a data subject (cf. articles 15-22 GDPR)
| Right to information and right to access your personal data | You may at any time request more information on our processing activities and the personal data that we are keeping from you. |
| Right to rectification of inaccurate or incomplete personal data of | You have the right to require us to, without undue delay, rectify or complete any of your personal data that is inaccurate or incomplete. |
| Right to deletion of your personal data (‘right to be forgotten’) | You may request us to delete (part of) your personal data in the following situations:
when the processing is no longer necessary for achieving the purposes for which they we collected or otherwise processed these; or when the processing was based on your consent and you have decided to withdraw that consent; when you have other reasonable grounds to object to the processing of your personal data; when we would unlawfully process your personal data; when your personal data have to be erased in compliance with a legal obligation directed to us. We note that in some case, we may refuse to delete your personal data: (i) for exercising the right of freedom of expression and information; (ii) for compliance with a legal obligation; or (iii) for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims. |
| Right to restriction of processing | You may request us to (temporarily) restrict the processing of your personal data in the following situations:
when you have contested the accuracy of your personal data, for a period enabling us to verify this accuracy; or when the processing appears to be unlawful and you request us the restriction of use of your data instead of the deletion of this data; or when we no longer need the personal data for the purposes of the processing, but you need them for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims; or pending verification whether our legitimate grounds override yours in the framework of an objection. |
| Right to object to the processing of your personal data (free of charge) | You may under certain circumstances object to the processing of your personal data, when such processing is based on our “legitimate interests”. If we agree, we will no longer process your personal data, unless we have compelling legitimate grounds to do so, or because such a processing is necessary.
Where we process your personal data for direct marketing purposes ( |
| Right to data portability | In some cases, you have the right to receive all your personal data in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format and have the right to transmit those data to another controller. This right applies:
in case the processing is based on consent or on the necessity for the performance of a contract; and in case the processing is carried out by automated means. |