Privacy Policy

What personal data we collect and how we use it

What we need

FDEA is the ‘controller’ of the personal data you provide to us. We collect basic business personal data about you; your name, company name, company address, company telephone number, company email address, export activities and product range, if you enter a contract with us, express an interest in our services or become a member of the FDEA. We will also collect data on what parts of our service interest you.

Why we need it

We collect your personal data in connection with membership, specific activities, such as FDEA member directory listings (online, printed and app version), event updates, newsletter requests, registration for exhibitions and events, or information you provide at public events.

The information is needed to fulfil your request or to enable us to keep you up to date with information we consider to be of legitimate interest,eg industry news, industry events, FDEA membership, letting you know about DIT activity or sharing buyer requests.

How we obtain your details

We collect your personal information in a number of ways:

  • When you provide it to us directly
  • When you become a member of the FDEA
  • When you sign up as a delegate to an FDEA event, or one run by our event delivery partner PS8.
  • We collect it when you sign up for information on www.ukfdea.com
  • When you have given it to a third party and you have provided permission to pass your information on to us

Our marketing

Sometimes, we will process your personal data to provide you with information about our work or our activities that you have requested or are expecting.

On other occasions, we may process personal data when we need to do this to fulfil a contract (for example, your entry in the FDEA Buyer’s Guide/Directory of members, or if you have signed up for an event).

We also process your data when it is in our legitimate interests to do this and when these interests do not override your rights. Those legitimate interests include providing you with information on industry news, industry opportunities, upcoming events and exhibitions which are relevant to your business. Please see the section on ‘Legitimate Interest’ for more information.

Sharing your information

We only disclose information to third parties or individuals when obliged to by law, for purposes of national security, taxation and criminal investigations and the following:

If you have agreed that we may do so.

If we run an event in partnership with other named organisations your details may need to be shared. We will be very clear what will happen to your data when you register.

We will never sell or rent your personal information to other organisations.

Retaining your information

We will continue to hold client’s details (those who have entered a contract with us) unless instructed to delete your record. All other contacts will remain on our database for 8 years from the date of this policy (April 2018) after which we will email you to check you would like to continue hearing from us.

Website Collected information

You can visit our website www.ukfdea.com without telling us who you are or providing any personal information. We do not collect any information about Internet Protocol or use cookies to process data. If you sign up to receive our mailings on the website, your data will be added to our database. You will be able to unsubscribe at any time.

You can stop receiving our emails at any time:

Click the unsubscribe link at the bottom of any marketing email or contact  and ask to be removed from our database.

Our Legitimate interests

Broadly speaking Legitimate Interests means that we can process your personal information if:

  • We have a genuine and legitimate reason and we are not harming any of your rights and interests
  • We will carefully consider and balance any potential impact on you and your rights before contacting you with emails pertaining to our legitimate business interests of promoting our activities, market information or events and exhibitions within the food and drink sector.
  • We generally use legitimate interests as an approach for our direct marketing and newsletters.

The following are some examples of when and why we would use our legitimate interests as an approach to market food and drink export related opportunities.

The only personal data that we hold on any individual is their employer name and address; telephone number; email address and information relating to their dealings with us as a representative of their employer.

This information is held for use in business to business marketing and relaying relevant industry information.

It is our interest with the company and not the individual employed by the company that dictates our need to open communication.

We will send email marketing which details opportunities, including events and exhibitions we have coming up, as we have identified that your company may have interest in receiving these mailings.

We will make sure our marketing is relevant for you.

We will only contact you for business purposes

Your interests and rights

When we process your personal information for our legitimate interests, we will consider and balance any potential impact on you and your rights under data protection and any other relevant law. Our legitimate business interests do not automatically override your interests – we will not use your personal data for activities where our interests are overridden by the impact on you (unless we have your consent).

New data protection law, starting in May 2018, gives everyone a number of very important rights. These are:

  • Transparency over how we use your personal information (right to be informed).
  • Request a copy of the information we hold about you, which will be provided to you within one month (right of access).
  • Update or amend the information we hold about you if it is wrong (right of rectification).
  • Ask us to stop using your information (right to restrict processing).
  • Ask us to remove your personal information from our records (right to be ‘forgotten’).
  • Object to the processing of your information for marketing purposes (right to object).
  • Obtain and reuse your personal data for your own purposes (right to data portability).
  • Not be subject to a decision when it is based on automated processing (automated decision making and profiling).

If you would like to know more about your rights under the data protection law see the Information Commissioners Office website.

This document was last updated: April 2018

Get In Touch...

The FDEA team is always keen to hear from any food and drink exporters or related service suppliers.
Please do get in touch via the form.