TungArc supplies copper tungsten, silver tungsten and related electrical contact materials to switchgear builders, OEMs and distributors. Almost everyone who contacts us does so on behalf of a company — a design engineer, a purchasing manager, a quality lead. This policy is written for that relationship. It explains what we collect when you send an enquiry or a drawing, what we do with it, how long we keep it, and what you can ask us to do about it.
Effective date: 28 August 2026
1. What we collect
- Enquiry and quotation details. Your name, business email, company name, phone or WhatsApp number, country, expected annual volume, and what you tell us about your requirement — material grade, dimensions, tolerances, application and quantities.
- Drawings and technical material. Any drawings, specifications, test reports or photographs you send us, whether through the website or by email. See section 2, which is about this specifically.
- Correspondence. The emails and messages we exchange while we scope, quote, sample and follow up on a project.
- Newsletter sign-up. If you subscribe, your email address.
- Technical data from your visit. IP address, browser and device type, operating system, pages viewed, referring site and timestamps. Part of this is collected only if you accept analytics cookies — see section 6.
- Anti-spam verification. Our enquiry forms use Cloudflare Turnstile, which reads signals from your browser to tell a person from an automated script.
We do not ask for payment card numbers, identity document numbers, or any special category data (health, biometrics, political or religious views) through the website. If a commercial matter requires such information, send it by email rather than through the web form.
2. Drawings, specifications and other project material
Much of what reaches us is your employer's engineering property rather than your personal data, and we treat it that way.
- We use your drawings and specifications only to quote, sample and manufacture your part. We do not use them to develop products for anyone else and we do not show them to your competitors.
- Where quoting or production requires it, we pass the necessary dimensions and specifications to a manufacturing partner. Tell us if the material is confidential and we will require the partner to sign a confidentiality agreement before anything is sent. If you already have an NDA with us, its terms govern.
- If your drawing carries a confidentiality marking, we keep it. We do not strip it and we do not circulate the file beyond the people who need it.
3. Note on business contact details
Most of what you send is company information — a company name, an address, a VAT number. That is not personal data and this policy does not restrict it. But your name, your business email and your direct phone number identify you as an individual, and data protection law treats those as your personal data even though you are writing in a professional capacity. The rest of this policy is about that part.
4. How we use the information, and on what basis
| What we do | Basis under the GDPR / UK GDPR, where it applies |
|---|---|
| Answering your enquiry, checking a grade against your application, preparing a quotation, arranging samples | Steps taken at your request before entering into a contract |
| Producing, inspecting, packing, shipping and invoicing an order; handling quality claims and warranty questions | Performance of a contract |
| Keeping export, customs, tax and accounting records | Legal obligation |
| Protecting the site against spam, scraping and automated abuse; diagnosing faults | Our legitimate interest in keeping the site and our correspondence usable |
| Following up on an open enquiry and keeping a record of the projects we have discussed with you | Our legitimate interest in running a business relationship |
| Analytics — understanding which pages and material grades visitors use, and improving the site | Your consent, given through the cookie banner and withdrawable at any time |
| Sending the newsletter and product updates | Your consent, given when you subscribe and withdrawable at any time |
5. Who we share it with
We do not sell personal information and we do not share it for anyone else's advertising.
- Our manufacturing and testing partners, where a quotation or an order requires it, on the confidentiality terms described in section 2.
- Logistics and customs agents, to ship and clear goods.
- Service providers that run the site and our email: Cloudflare (content delivery, security and Turnstile), Amazon Web Services (hosting), Google Analytics (site statistics, only with your consent), and our email providers for sending and receiving business correspondence.
- Professional advisers and authorities, where the law requires it — customs and tax authorities being the usual case in export business.
These providers process data under contract with us. They may access your information only as needed to provide their service, and are not permitted to use it for their own purposes.
6. Cookies and analytics
If you are in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, we show a banner on your first visit asking whether you accept analytics cookies, and nothing analytical runs until you choose. If you select "Essential only", no analytics or marketing cookies are set at all.
Outside those regions, where prior consent is not required, analytics is enabled by default. You can turn it off at any time by blocking cookies for this site in your browser. Marketing and advertising cookies are never enabled by default in any region.
- Strictly necessary — set by Cloudflare to route requests, protect the site from automated abuse and operate the Turnstile check on our forms, plus your language preference. These are required for the site to work and are not covered by the banner.
- Your browser's local storage — remembers your cookie choice. This is held on your own device; clearing your browser storage removes it.
- Analytics (only if you accept) — Google Analytics 4 sets
_gaand_ga_<id>cookies to count visits and show us which pages and grades are used. We do not use these to identify you personally.
We do not run advertising cookies and we do not track you across third-party websites.
Changing your mind. If you were shown the banner and want to withdraw the consent you gave, clear this site's cookies and site data in your browser; the banner will appear again on your next visit and you can choose "Essential only". If no banner was shown to you, analytics can be turned off by blocking cookies for this site. You can also block cookies in your browser settings, though some site functions may stop working.
7. How long we keep information
| Information | How long |
|---|---|
| Enquiries and quotations that did not lead to an order | Kept while the business relationship is active; three years after the last contact we remove the personal details (name, email address, phone number) and keep only the company name and the technical requirement |
| Orders, invoices, export and customs records | Ten years, to meet accounting, tax and export record-keeping obligations |
| Drawings and technical material | For the life of the supply relationship, or as your NDA with us specifies; returned or destroyed on request where no production record has to be kept |
| Newsletter subscription | Until you unsubscribe |
| Website and security logs, including IP addresses | Twelve months |
| Analytics data | As configured in Google Analytics, currently fourteen months |
Where a record still has to be kept for tax or export reasons after you ask us to delete your data, we remove the parts that identify you personally and retain the commercial document itself.
8. How we protect information
The site is served over HTTPS. Access to enquiry records and project files is limited to the colleagues who handle quotations, engineering and orders. Our forms are protected against automated abuse, and administrative access to the systems behind this site is restricted and rate-limited.
No transmission over the internet is ever completely secure. If a breach occurs that is likely to put your rights at risk, we will notify you and the relevant supervisory authority as the applicable law requires.
9. International transfers
Our commercial and engineering team is in China, our manufacturing partners are in China, and this website is hosted in the United States and delivered through a global content delivery network. If you are in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom or another jurisdiction that restricts international transfers, sending us an enquiry or a drawing necessarily involves transferring that information to those countries.
Where the law requires a transfer safeguard, we rely on Standard Contractual Clauses or an equivalent mechanism with the recipient, together with the confidentiality obligations described in section 2. Write to sales@tungarc.com if your compliance team needs this in writing.
10. Your rights
Depending on where you are, you may have the right to ask us for a copy of the personal information we hold about you, to correct it, to delete it, to restrict or object to how we use it, to receive it in a portable form, and to withdraw a consent you previously gave. You can unsubscribe from the newsletter at any time using the link in each email.
Write to sales@tungarc.com with "Privacy request" in the subject line. We will reply within 30 days. We may need to confirm who you are, or that you are authorised to act for the company concerned, before we act on a request.
Two things worth knowing. Withdrawing consent does not undo what we lawfully did before you withdrew it. And where we keep a document because tax or export law requires it, we cannot delete the document itself — but we can remove the details that identify you personally.
If you are not satisfied with how we handle your request, you have the right to complain to the data protection authority in the country where you live or work. In the European Union each member state has its own authority; in the United Kingdom it is the Information Commissioner's Office. We would appreciate the chance to resolve it with you first.
11. Marketing
We send the newsletter and product updates only to people who asked for them, and every message has an unsubscribe link. Replying to your enquiry is not marketing, and we will keep answering your technical questions whether or not you subscribe.
12. Children
This is an industrial supply site directed at business users. It is not intended for children and we do not knowingly collect information from them.
13. Changes to this policy
If we change how we handle information we will update this page and move the effective date at the top. Significant changes affecting people we are already in contact with will be raised in our correspondence with them.
14. Contact
Questions about this policy, requests about your data, or a confidentiality requirement for a specific project: sales@tungarc.com.