Privacy policy

This notice describes how Cowest Machinery handles the personal data you send through this website, mainly through the enquiry form, and the data the website collects on its own while you browse. It applies from the day this website goes live and is updated when the way we handle data changes.

Who is responsible for your data

The controller of the personal data described in this notice is Guangdong Cowest Machinery Equipment Ltd., Building B5, Yisheng Industrial Park, Qingcheng District, Qingyuan, Guangdong, China. In this notice, "we" and "Cowest Machinery" mean this company.

What we collect

Enquiry data. When you send the enquiry form, we receive what you type into it: your company, your name, your e-mail address and phone or WhatsApp number, the installation country and city, your role, the end user, the industry and end use, whether the lifter will be re-exported and where, and the details of the load, the task, the site and the power supply. You can also attach photos, videos or drawings. The form marks which fields are required.

E-mail and messages. If you write to us by e-mail or WhatsApp instead, we keep the message and the contact details that come with it.

Server logs. Like most websites, the server that delivers these pages records technical data about each request: the IP address, the date and time, the page requested, the referring page and the browser type. These logs are used to keep the website running and secure.

Cookies. The website sets a small number of cookies; which ones, and which stay off until you accept them, is described in the cookie policy linked below.

We do not ask for payment details or government identity numbers on this website, and we do not knowingly collect data from children.

Why we use it and the legal basis

Enquiry data is used to answer your enquiry: to log it, to ask for the details we still need, to size a lifter for your load and to prepare a quotation. Where the data protection law of the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom applies, the basis is the steps taken at your request before a contract, and our legitimate interest in replying to the business enquiries we receive.

Before we quote, the buyer, the consignee and the end user named in your enquiry are checked against sanctions lists, and the country and the end use against export-control and sanctions rules. The basis for this check is our legitimate interest in trading lawfully, and the legal obligations that apply to international trade.

Server logs are used to run and protect the website; the basis is our legitimate interest in a working, secure website.

Statistics cookies, if you accept them, are used to see which pages are visited and how the website is used, so that we can improve it; the basis is your consent, which you can withdraw at any time.

We do not sell your data and we do not use it for advertising. We do not send marketing e-mail to addresses collected through this website unless you have asked for it. Decisions about your enquiry are made by people, not by automated means.

Who receives it and where it is processed

Enquiries are read by our sales team and by the people who size lifters and prepare quotations. The form is first stored in the enquiry system behind this website and is then passed to the sales team.

Service providers. The website is delivered by Cloudflare Pages (Cloudflare, Inc., San Francisco, USA) from Cloudflare's global network of data centres. The enquiry form is processed by a Cloudflare Worker; a copy of each enquiry is held in Cloudflare's key-value storage for twelve months, and the notification e-mail is sent through Resend (Resend, Inc., USA) to our mailbox. These providers process data on our behalf and only as far as the service needs. If you accept statistics cookies, Cloudflare Web Analytics also receives usage data; it works without cookies or persistent identifiers.

Processing in China. Cowest Machinery is located in China, so enquiry data is received and processed there. For visitors in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, the transfer to China rests on its being necessary to answer the enquiry you send us and to carry out any contract that follows (Article 49(1)(b) GDPR); the processing by Cloudflare and Resend in the United States is covered by the standard contractual clauses in their data processing terms.

Authorities. Where export-control, sanctions or other law requires it, we may have to disclose enquiry details to the competent authorities.

How long we keep it

Enquiry data is kept for as long as it is needed to handle the enquiry and any order that follows from it, and for as long as business and tax records must be kept under the law that applies to us; after that it is deleted or made anonymous. The copy held in the enquiry system behind this website is deleted after twelve months; the e-mail and any order records are kept for as long as Chinese accounting and tax law requires.

We keep no server logs of our own; Cloudflare keeps connection logs for a short period for security and troubleshooting under its own retention rules. Cookie lifetimes are listed in the cookie policy.

Your rights

Depending on the law that applies to you, you can ask us:

to confirm whether we hold personal data about you, and to receive a copy of it;
to correct data that is wrong or incomplete;
to delete your data, where we no longer need it or where you withdraw consent;
to restrict how we use it while a question about it is settled;
to object to use that is based on our legitimate interests;
to receive the data you gave us in a machine-readable format;
to withdraw consent at any time, without affecting what was done before the withdrawal.

To exercise a right, write to the address given in this notice. We may ask you to confirm your identity before we reply, and we reply within the time the applicable law allows, normally within one month. If you are in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, you can also complain to the data protection authority in the country where you live or work.

Cookies

This website uses necessary cookies to run, and statistics cookies only if you accept them; statistics cookies stay off until you do. What each cookie does and how to change your choice is explained in the cookie policy.

How to contact us and changes to this notice

For anything about your data, write to sales@polarmachinery.com or use the contact page; please mention your enquiry reference number if you have one.

This notice is updated when the way we handle data changes, for example when the hosting or analytics providers change; the version published at this address is the current one.