Data Protection Statement

We want you to feel secure and at ease as you collaborate successfully with Festo. We also want to meet your needs and be a reliable partner when it comes to protecting your personal data.

Festo Ltd Data Privacy Notice

Festo Limited (“Festo”) respects your privacy and is committed to protecting your personal data. This privacy notice will inform you as to how we look after your personal data and tell you about your privacy rights and how the law protects you.

For your ease of reference, this privacy notice is divided into the following sections:

1. Important information and who we are.
2. The data we collect about you.
3. How your personal data is collected.
4. How we use your personal data.
5. Disclosures of your personal data.
6. International transfers.
7. Data security.
8. Data retention.
9. Your legal rights.
10. Glossary.

1 - Important information and who we are

Purpose of this privacy notice

This privacy notice aims to give you information on how Festo collects and processes your personal data.

It is important that you read this privacy policy together with any other privacy policy or fair processing policy we may provide on specific occasions when we are collecting or processing personal data about you so that you are fully aware of how and why we are using your data. This privacy policy supplements other notices and privacy policies and is not intended to override them.

Controller

Festo is the controller and responsible for your personal data (collectively referred to as "we", "us" or "our" in this privacy notice).

We have appointed a data protection officer (“DPO”) who is responsible for overseeing questions in relation to this privacy notice. If you have any questions about this privacy notice, including any requests to exercise your rights in relation to your personal information, please contact the DPO using the details set out below.

Contact details

Full name of legal entity: Festo Limited (Company Number: 00926749)

Name or title of DPO: Sarah Laidlaw-Smith

Email address: dataprivacy.gb@festo.com

Postal address: Festo Limited, Applied Automation House, Caswell Road, Brackmills Industrial Estate, Northampton, NN4 7PY

You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues (www.ico.org.uk). We would, however, appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns before you approach the ICO so please contact us in the first instance.

Changes to the privacy notice and your duty to inform us of changes

We may change this privacy notice from time to time by updating this page in order to reflect changes in the law and/or our privacy practices. We advise you to check this privacy notice for changes whenever you visit our website - www.festo.com

It is important that the personal data we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal data changes during your relationship with us.

2 - The data we collect about you

We use different methods to collect data from and about you including through:

Direct interactions.

You may give us personal data such as your Identity, Contact, Financial, Transaction, Profile, Marketing and Communications Data by filling in forms or by corresponding with us by post, phone, email, through our website and social media, meeting face to face at our offices or otherwise. This includes personal data you provide when you:

  • meet employees face to face;
  • enquire about our products;
  • provide your business card;
  • complete lead capture forms at events we also attend;
  • visit our offices and/or sign the electronic visitor system;
  • create an account on our website;
  • request marketing to be sent to you; or
  • give us some feedback.

Automated technologies or interactions

As you interact with our websites and with emails received from us, we may automatically collect Technical and Usage Data about your equipment, browsing actions and patterns. We collect this personal data by using cookies, server logs and other similar technologies. For your searches on Festo websites, you only need to set your cookie setting once! Your consents are stored and applied to all websites for different devices.

Please refer to our Cookie Policy.

Web-Tools

Information on web tools used by Festo can be found under Web Tools

Internal databases.

We may collect personal data from other entities forming part of the Festo Group and from our own internal databases. This includes, but is not limited to, personal data obtained through the Festo Official Partner Network, Festo Didactic online testing and personal data already stored within our email and electronic storage systems/databases.

Third parties or publicly available sources. 

We may receive and share personal data about you with various third parties and public sources as set out below:

Identity, Contact and Marketing and Communications Data from the following sources:

a) publicly available sources such as CoCredo and Companies House;

b) industry information resources such as GlobalSpec and Industry Direct;

c) marketing bodies such as Mark Allen Business Ltd and various events organisers from time to time; and

d) our other customers and prospective customers of Festo

3 - How is your personal data collected?

We use different methods to collect data from and about you including through:

Direct interactions

You may give us personal data such as your Identity, Contact, Financial, Transaction, Profile, Marketing and Communications Data by filling in forms or by corresponding with us by post, phone, email, through our website and social media, meeting face to face at our offices or otherwise. This includes personal data you provide when you:

  • meet employees face to face;
  • enquire about our products;
  • provide your business card;
  • complete lead capture forms at events we also attend;
  • visit our offices and/or sign the electronic visitor system;
  • create an account on our website;
  • request marketing to be sent to you; or
  • give us some feedback.

Automated technologies or interactions.

As you interact with our websites and with emails received from us, we may automatically collect Technical and Usage Data about your equipment, browsing actions and patterns. We collect this personal data by using cookies, server logs and other similar technologies. For your searches on Festo websites, you only need to set your cookie setting once! Your consents are stored and applied to all websites for different devices.

We use the Eloqua service to provide you with an optimal offer for your needs. The Eloqua servers of the provider ORACLE Deutschland B.V. & Co. KG, Riesstrasse 25, 80992 Munich, Germany are located in the EU. With your consent, Festo will activate an Eloqua cookie in order to analyse and improve the content we offer you. Interactions with our emails and website help us to identify your interests and provide you relevant information.

Please refer to our Cookie Policy.

Web-Tools

Information on web tools used by Festo can be found under Web Tools

Internal databases. We may collect personal data from other entities forming part of the Festo Group and from our own internal databases. This includes, but is not limited to, personal data obtained through the Festo Official Partner Network, Festo Didactic online testing and personal data already stored within our email and electronic storage systems/databases.

Third parties or publicly available sources. We may receive and share personal data about you with various third parties and public sources as set out below:

  • Identity, Contact and Marketing and Communications Data from the following sources:

a) publicly available sources such as CoCredo and Companies House;

b) industry information resources such as GlobalSpec and Industry Direct;

c) marketing bodies such as Mark Allen Business Ltd and various events organisers from time to time; and

d) our other customers and prospective customers of Festo

4 - How we use your personal data

We will only use your personal data when the law allows us to. Most commonly, we will use your personal data in the following circumstances:

  • Where we need to perform the contract we are about to enter into or have entered into with you.
  • Where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests.
  • Where we need to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation. 

Generally we do not rely on consent as a legal basis for processing your personal data other than in relation to sending third party direct marketing communications to you if you are an individual or consumer via email or text message. You have the right to withdraw consent to marketing at any time by emailing dataprivacy.gb@festo.com.

Download document - Purposes for which we will use your personal data

Marketing

We strive to provide you with choices regarding certain personal data uses, particularly around marketing.

Promotional offers from us

We may use your Identity, Contact, Technical, Usage, Profile and Marketing and Communications Data to form a view on what we think you may want or need, or what may be of interest to you. This is how we decide which products, services and offers may be relevant for you (we call this marketing). In certain situations, we may also use automated decision making to offer the most relevant products to you.

You will receive marketing communications from us if you have requested information from us or purchased goods from us and, in each case, you have not exercised your right to object to receive that marketing.

Third-party marketing

We will get your express opt-in consent before we share an individual’s personal data with any company outside the Festo group of companies for electronic marketing purposes.

Object to marketing

You can ask us or third parties to stop sending you marketing messages at any time by clicking on and following the unsubscribe link in the email.

Where you exercise your right to object to your personal data being used to receive these marketing messages, this will not apply to personal data provided to us as a result of an order you have made.

Change of purpose

We will only use your personal data for the purposes for which we collected it, unless we reasonably consider that we need to use it for another reason and that reason is compatible with the original purpose. If you wish to get an explanation as to how the processing for the new purpose is compatible with the original purpose, please email us at dataprivacy.gb@festo.com.

If we need to use your personal data for an unrelated purpose, we will notify you and we will explain the legal basis which allows us to do so.

Please note that we may process your personal data without your knowledge or consent, in compliance with the above rules, where this is required or permitted by law.

5 - Disclosures of your personal data

We may have to share your personal data with the parties set out below for the purposes set out in the table in paragraph 4 above.

  • Internal Third Parties such as other companies within the Festo Group
  • External Third Parties such as the following:

  • Service providers providing IT, telephone, system administration and support services.
  • Professional advisers including lawyers,
  • bankers, auditors and insurers based providing consultancy, banking, legal, insurance and accounting services.
  • HM Revenue & Customs, regulators and other authorities who may require reporting of processing activities in certain circumstances.

Other third parties such as

  • credit card companies;
  • our Official Partners.
  • marketing suppliers for our own marketing purposes;
  • travel companies when making travel arrangements for our contacts;
  • educational establishments when we are obtaining accreditation for contacts; and
  • sub-contractors such as Marketing Results Limited which sends out our marketing materials to our contacts, and marketing suppliers that provide our telephone services to maintain and enhance data quality.

We require all third parties to respect the security of your personal data and to treat it in accordance with the law. We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes and only permit them to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.

6 - International transfers

We share your personal data within the Festo Group. This will involve transferring your data outside the UK.

We ensure your personal data is protected through binding corporate rules which require all our group companies to follow the same rules when processing your personal data.

Whenever we transfer your personal data out of the UK, we ensure a similar degree of protection is afforded to it by ensuring a safeguard is implemented. For example, where we use providers based in the US, we may transfer data to them if they are part of the Privacy Shield which requires them to provide similar protection to personal data shared between the UK and the US.

Please email dataprivacy.gb@festo.com if you want further information on the specific mechanism used by us when transferring your personal data out of the UK.

7 - Data security

We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your personal data to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who need to know. They will only process your personal data on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected personal data breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach where we are legally required to do so.

8 - Data retention

How long will your data be stored?
We will only retain your personal data for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including or the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements.

To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements.

9 - Your legal rights

What are your data protection rights?

Under certain circumstances, you have rights under data protection laws in relation to your personal data.

You have the right to:

Request access to your personal data (commonly known as a "data subject access request"). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal data we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.

Request correction of the personal data that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate data we hold about you corrected, though we may need to verify the accuracy of the new data you provide to us.

Request erasure of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal data where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal data where you have successfully exercised your right to object to processing (see below), where we may have processed your information unlawfully or where we are required to erase your personal data to comply with local law. Note, however, that we may not always be able to comply with your request of erasure for specific legal reasons which will be notified to you, if applicable, at the time of your request.

Object to processing of your personal data where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground as you feel it impacts on your fundamental rights and freedoms. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal data for direct marketing purposes. In some cases, we may demonstrate that we have compelling legitimate grounds to process your information which override your rights and freedoms.

Request restriction of processing of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of your personal data in the following scenarios: (a) if you want us to establish the data's accuracy; (b) where our use of the data is unlawful but you do not want us to erase it; (c) where you need us to hold the data even if we no longer require it as you need it to establish, exercise or defend legal claims; or (d) you have objected to our use of your data but we need to verify whether we have overriding legitimate grounds to use it.

Request the transfer of your personal data to you or to a third party. We will provide to you, or a third party you have chosen, your personal data in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format. Note that this right only applies to automated information which you initially provided consent for us to use or where we used the information to perform a contract with you.

Withdraw consent at any time where we are relying on consent to process your personal data. However, this will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdraw your consent. If you withdraw your consent, we may not be able to provide certain products or services to you. We will advise you if this is the case at the time you withdraw your consent.

If you wish to exercise any of the rights set out above, please email dataprivacy.gb@festo.com

No fee usually required

You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal data (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive. Alternatively, we may refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances.

What we may need from you

We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access your personal data (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is a security measure to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. We may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request to speed up our response.

Time limit to respond

We try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. Occasionally it may take us longer than a month if your request is particularly complex or you have made a number of requests. In this case, we will notify you and keep you updated.

10. Glossary

Legitimate Interest means the interest of our business in conducting and managing our business to enable us to give you the best service/product and the best and most secure experience. We make sure we consider and balance any potential impact on you (both positive and negative) and your rights before we process your personal data for our legitimate interests. We do not use your personal data for activities where our interests are overridden by the impact on you (unless we have your consent or are otherwise required or permitted to by law). You can obtain further information about how we assess our legitimate interests against any potential impact on you in respect of specific activities by emailing us at dataprivacy.gb@festo.com.

Performance of Contract means processing your data where it is necessary for the performance of a contract to which you are a party or to take steps at your request before entering into such a contract.

Comply with a legal or regulatory obligation means processing your personal data where it is necessary for compliance with a legal or regulatory obligation that we are subject to.

Version: 8 – September 2021