Privacy statement

Privacy statement Hokuetsu

Hokuetsu Industries Europe B.V. (henceforth referred as ‘Hokuetsu’ is committed to protecting the privacy and security of your personal data.
This privacy statement describes how we manage (personal) data collected through our website (www.hokuetsu.eu) and explains how that information is used, maintained, shared, protected and how you can update it.

1. From whom do we process personal data
We collect and process personal data from:
- customers: our clients and their representatives
- those interested in Hokuetsu or its services (potential customers, job applicants)
- website visitors
- visitors to our facilities
- our employees

Hokuetsu mainly collects personal data about you when you interact with this website, purchase our products, visit our facilities or interact with us in any other way

2. Sources of personal data
We collect data in the following ways:
a) Information you provide to us
b) Information that we obtain when you purchase our products, use our services or visit of this website.

3. The legal basis for the processing of your personal data
We can only process your personal data if we have a proper reason for doing so. According to the law, we can only process your data for one or more of these reasons:
• To fulfil a contract we have with you, or
• If we have a legal duty to use your data for a particular reason, or
• When you consent to it, or
• When it is in our legitimate interests.
Legitimate interests are our business or commercial reasons for using your data, but even so, we will not unfairly put our legitimate interests above what is best for you.
Hokuetsu uses information provided to us for our general business use. This may include the following purposes:
• To respond to your requests;
• To provide services to you including customer services issues;
• To send communications to you about our or our affiliates’ current services, new services or promotions that we are developing, and opportunities that may be available to you;
• To alert you to new features or enhancements to our services or products
• To communicate with you about job or career opportunities about which you have inquired;
• To ensure that our site and our services function in an effective manner for you;
• To measure or understand the effectiveness of advertising and outreach.
• Marketing and events: We use personal information to deliver marketing and event communications to you across various platforms, such as email, telephone, text messaging, direct mail, and online. If we send you a marketing email, it will include instructions on how to opt out of receiving these emails in the future. We also maintain email preference centers for you to manage your information and marketing preferences. Please remember that even if you opt out of receiving marketing emails, we may still send you important Service information related to your accounts and subscriptions.
• Legal obligations: We may be required to use and retain personal information for legal and compliance reasons, such as the prevention, detection, or investigation of a crime; loss prevention; or fraud. We may also use personal information to meet our internal and external audit requirements, information security purposes, and as we otherwise believe to be necessary or appropriate:
We endeavor to collect only such information that is reasonably necessary to perform services for you or to respond to your inquiries.
You are responsible for ensuring that the information you provide is accurate, complete and current; we will take reasonable steps to ensure that the information we collect and use is relevant to its intended use.

This site is not intended to collect or maintain personally data from persons under 16 years old. If Hokuetsu learns that personally identifiable information of a person under 16 years old has been collected without verifiable parental consent, then Hokuetsu will take the appropriate steps to delete such information.

4. Processed data and purpose
Below we summarize what data we generally process from the above persons and with what purpose.
-Customers: name, address, telephone number, e-mail address and other information provided by the customer. This data is processed for maintaining contact with the customer, entering into and executing the agreement or assignment, collecting receivables, evaluating and improving our services and other internal management activities.
-Interested: name, address, telephone number, e-mail address and other information provided by the interested party. These data are processed for answering the questions of interested, providing information, doing customer relationship management and other purposes, depending on the reason for the interest shown.
-Website visitors : IP address, any cookies that we have placed and details about the device with which the website is visited. This data is processed to analyse how often our website is visited, to keep safe and accessible website, in order to use our online services to improve the website and for offering targeted ads or banners.
-Visitors to our facilities: passport details; name, date of birth, passport number, purpose of visit and other information required by law or for security purposes.
-Employees: Name, address, place of residence, date of birth, e-mail address, copy of passport, BSN number. These data are processed for entering into and executing the employment contract, payment of salary, the payment of taxes and premiums etc.

We will not use the personal data for other purposes, unless you have given permission in advance for this or we may or must do so on the grounds of the law.

5. Need for processing
If you purchase our products or use our services, the processing of personal data is a contractual obligation to enable performance of the agreement.
In other cases, the provision of personal data is a necessary condition to answer your question, to send a newsletter or to be able to represent the justified interests mentioned in this statement. If you do not provide the information we can not provide you with proper services.

6. Sharing of your personal data
Hokuetsu does not share or disclose personal data, unless necessary to provide services or conduct our business operations.
Hokuetsu may, with your consent, disclose information about you to group companies or third parties, namely:
a) Within Hokuetsu: Our businesses around the world are supported by a variety of Hokuetsu teams and functions, and personal information will be made available to them if necessary for the provision of our services, account administration, sales and marketing, customer and technical support, and business and product development, for instance. All of our employees and contractors are required to follow our data protection and security policies when handling personal data.
b) Our third-party service providers: We collaborate with and are supported by service providers around the world. Personal data will be made available to these parties only when necessary to fulfil the services they provide to us, such as software, system, and platform support; direct marketing services; cloud hosting services; advertising; and order fulfilment and delivery. Our third-party service providers are not permitted to share or use personal data we make available to them for any other purpose than to provide services to us.
c) Third parties for legal reasons: We will share personal data when we believe it is required to comply with legal obligations and respond to requests from government agencies, including law enforcement and other public authorities, which may include such authorities outside your country of residence.
Personal data may also be transferred to group companies or third parties in the event of a merger, sale, restructure, acquisition, joint venture, assignment, transfer, or other disposition of all or any portion of our business, assets, or stock (including in connection with any bankruptcy or similar proceedings), or if necessary to protect our rights, users, systems, and services.

7. Where we store and process personal data
Hokuetsu is a global organization, and your personal data may be stored and processed outside at an external location, such as a third party datacentre. We take steps to ensure that the information we collect is processed according to this privacy statement and the requirements of applicable law wherever the data is located. Hokuetsu has networks, databases, servers, systems, support, and help desks located throughout our offices around the world. We collaborate with third parties such as cloud hosting services, suppliers, and technology support located around the world to serve the needs of our business, workforce, and customers. We take appropriate steps to ensure that personal data is processed, secured, and transferred according to applicable law. In some cases, we may need to disclose or transfer your personal data within Hokuetsu or to third parties.
When we transfer personal information from the European Economic Area to other countries in which applicable laws do not offer the same level of data privacy protection as in your home country, we take measures to provide an appropriate level of data privacy protection.

8. How we secure your personal data
Hokuetsu highly values properly securing your personal data. For this purpose, we have implemented appropriate technical and organizational security measures. . These include secured servers, firewalls and data processing agreements with third parties who host our website and through which we send our e-mails. Our information security policies and procedures are closely aligned with widely accepted international standards and are reviewed regularly and updated as necessary to meet our business needs, changes in technology, and regulatory requirements.

9. How long we will keep your personal data
We will retain your personal information if we have a business need to do so or for as long as is needed to fulfill the purposes outlined in this privacy statement, unless a longer retention period is required by law (for example, to comply with applicable legal, tax or accounting requirements).

When we have no ongoing legitimate business need to process your personal information, we will either delete or anonymize it or, if this is not possible (for example, because your personal information has been stored in backup archives), then we will securely store your personal information and isolate it from any further processing until deletion is possible.

10. Cookies
Our website uses first party cookies for the functionality of the website. A “cookie” is an element of data that can be sent to your browser. Your browser may then store it on your system based on the preferences you have set on your browser. Cookies gather information about your operating system including, but not limited to, browser type and IP address. In that way, the server on which our website runs is able to recognize your browser and can keep track of which pages your browser already visited, but through cookies we can also remember, for example, language preferences.

11. Your privacy rights and our contact information
We respect your right to access and control your information, and we will respond to requests for information and, where applicable, will correct, amend, or delete your personal information.
In such cases, we will need you to respond with proof of your identity before you can exercise these rights.

1. The right to access information
At any point you can contact us to request the information we hold on you as well as why we have that information, who has access to the information and where we obtained the information from. Once we have received your request we will respond within one month.
There are no fees or charges for the first request but additional requests for the same data may be subject to an administrative fee.
2. The right to correct and update the information
If the data we hold on you is out of date, incomplete or incorrect, you can inform us and your data will be updated.
3. The right to have your information erased
If you feel that we should no longer be using your data or that we are illegally using your data, you can request that we erase the data we hold.
When we receive your request we will confirm whether the data has been deleted or the reason why it cannot be deleted (for example because we need it for our legitimate interests or regulatory purpose(s).
4. Right to limit the processing of data: you can ask us to (temporarily) stop processing data, for example to check the correctness of the data.
5. The right to transfer data: if data has been processed on the basis of permission or to execute an agreement with you, you can ask Hokuetsu to provide you with (or transfer to a third party) the data that you have provided to Hokuetsu, in a structured and machine-readable form.
6. Right of objection: you have the right to object to the processing of your personal data. Hokuetsu will cease processing unless there are legitimate or legal grounds for the processing. If you object to processing for direct marketing purposes, the personal data will no longer be processed for these purposes.
7. Right of objection against individual decision-making, including profiling: you have the right not to be subjected to a decision that is only taken on the basis of automated processing (including profiling), unless that decision has no "legal consequences" and no other significant consequences. Please note: such processing does not occur with Hokuetsu.
8. Withdrawal of consent: if and insofar as we process data on the basis of your consent, you have the right to withdraw the consent at any time. This does not affect the legality of the processing before the withdrawal.

If you wish to exercise your privacy rights, you can send an email to info@hokuetsu.nl. You can also send a letter to:

Hokuetsu Industries Europe B.V.
Aalsmeerderdijk 156
1438 AX Oude Meer
The Netherlands

You will receive a reply to your request within a month. If your request cannot be processed within a month, you will be notified accordingly. Hokuetsu is required to process your request within three months at the latest.There are no fees or charges for the first request but additional requests for the same data may be subject to an administrative fee.

You also have the right to file a complaint with the Dutch Data Protection Authority against processing of personal data. You can contact the Dutch Data Protection Authority for this at https://autoriteitpersoonsgegevens.nl/

12. Changes to this privacy statement
This privacy statement may be changed at any time without prior announcement. Changes come into effect as soon as they are published on this website.