Privacy & Cookies Policy
TrueNorth Engineering Ltd · Last updated 12 November 2026
This policy explains what personal data TrueNorth Engineering holds, why, who we share it with, the cookies we use, and the rights you have over your data. It covers data you give us through this website, and — in Business contact data we obtain from other sources — the business contact details we use to approach companies directly.
Who we are
This website is operated by TrueNorth Engineering Ltd ("we", "us", "our"), a company registered in England & Wales (Company No. 16656448, VAT GB499245046), based in Manchester, United Kingdom. We are the data controller for personal data collected through this site and for the business contact data described below, and are registered with the Information Commissioner's Office (registration reference ZC221001). Contact: admin@tneltd.com · sales@tneltd.com · +44 7757 174 197.
What we collect and why
Browsing this website requires no account and no personal data. When you contact us or request a quote, we collect what you provide and how you found us:
- Name, company, email and phone number — so we can respond to your enquiry and prepare a quotation.
- Part drawings, files and enquiry details you upload or send — so we can quote and manufacture what you need.
- How you found us — your answer to “How did you hear about us?”, plus any campaign tags in the link you followed and the website that referred you, so we can see which channels bring enquiries.
- Correspondence with us — to manage your enquiry and any resulting order.
Legal basis
We process enquiry and quote data to take steps at your request before entering into a contract, and to pursue our legitimate interests in responding to business enquiries and in knowing which channels bring them. Where you ask us for something that needs your consent, such as quota alerts or non-essential cookies, we rely on that consent, which you can withdraw at any time. When we contact businesses directly, our basis is legitimate interests, explained under "Business contact data we obtain from other sources".
Where your data goes
- Quote and contact form submissions are handled by Zoho CRM (Zoho Corporation, EU data centres — crm.zoho.eu), our customer-relationship-management processor. Zoho also supplies the anti-spam security code on our enquiry form; that check is loaded only once you start filling the form in, not when you arrive on the page.
- Analytics data, where you consent, is processed by Google (Google Analytics 4). Advertising data, where you separately consent, is processed by Google and LinkedIn (Insight Tag) — see cookies below.
- Fonts and all other page assets are served from our own web space. No third party is contacted simply because you loaded a page.
- We do not sell your data or share it with third parties for their own marketing.
International transfers
Zoho CRM stores our data in EU data centres. Where you consent to analytics or advertising, Google LLC and LinkedIn Corporation process data in the United States. Those transfers rely on the EU–US Data Privacy Framework and its UK Extension, under which both companies are certified, supported by the UK International Data Transfer Addendum to the EU Standard Contractual Clauses in the relevant processor terms. You can ask us for a copy of the safeguards we rely on by emailing admin@tneltd.com. If you choose "Essential only", no data leaves the UK/EEA as a result of your visit.
Cookies & analytics
The website works fully without cookies, and nothing is stored on your device or sent to a third party until you have made a choice on the banner. You get three options, presented equally:
- Essential only — nothing is set except the record of that choice itself.
- Analytics only — we enable Google Analytics 4 for measurement only. Advertising storage and ad personalisation stay switched off, and the LinkedIn Insight Tag is not loaded.
- Accept all — analytics as above, plus advertising: Google may use the data to build advertising audiences, and the LinkedIn Insight Tag lets us measure campaigns and show TrueNorth content to past visitors on LinkedIn.
Your choice is stored with the date it was made and we ask again after 12 months. You can change or withdraw it at any time using the "Cookie choices" link in the footer of any page — withdrawing deletes the analytics and advertising cookies already set and stops the tags immediately.
What each cookie does
| Name | Set by | Purpose | Category | Duration |
|---|---|---|---|---|
tne_consent | This site | Remembers your cookie choice and when you made it | Essential (local storage, not a cookie) | 12 months |
_ga | Distinguishes one visitor from another | Analytics | 2 years | |
_ga_DJZRXC443W | Keeps session state for this property | Analytics | 2 years | |
_gcl_au | Measures ad conversions | Advertising | 90 days | |
bcookie, lidc, li_sugr, UserMatchHistory, AnalyticsSyncHistory | Campaign measurement and showing you TrueNorth content on LinkedIn | Advertising | 30 days – 1 year | |
crmcsr, zalb_… | Zoho | Anti-spam security code and load balancing on our enquiry form — set only once you start using a form, never on page load | Strictly necessary | Session |
Our Steel Quota Trackers additionally keep a short-lived cache of quota balances in your browser's session storage so the page does not re-query HMRC on every click. It contains no personal data and is cleared when you close the tab.
Newsletter
If you are a customer or have dealt with us, we may email you up to once a week about steel supply and what we do, on the basis of legitimate interests. Reply "stop" at any time and we will take you off, and keep your address only to make sure of that.
Suppliers
When you complete our supplier questionnaire or send us a certificate, we collect the names, positions, email addresses and phone numbers given on it, with your company's details. We use them to assess and review you as a supplier, keep our quality records and contact you about them. Our lawful basis is our legitimate interest in checking who makes our parts and, where we have a contract with you, performing it.
We keep each form, with its certificates, for 11 years after the last order we placed with you while it was current. If we placed no order under it, we keep it for 12 months after you submitted it. A form that is never submitted is deleted 12 months after its link expired, and a file you remove from the form is deleted after you submit it.
An auditor of our quality system may see your form, as may the companies that host our systems and the AI tools we use. Other suppliers will not. Your rights, and how to complain, are set out below.
Business contact data we obtain from other sources
Alongside the enquiries that come to us, we contact businesses directly to introduce our engineering supply service. If we have contacted you by email, telephone or post and you did not give us your details yourself, this section explains where they came from and what you can do about it. It is the information required by Article 14 of the UK GDPR.
What we hold. Business contact data only: your name, job title, employer, work email address, and a work or mobile telephone number from the sources below. We may note the kind of role you hold, such as purchasing or operations, so that we write to you about the right thing. We hold nothing about you in a personal capacity, and no special-category data.
Where we get it. From your employer's own website, the Companies House register, published trade directories, and a business-to-business contact data provider (currently Apollo.io), which gives us the name, role, work email address and sometimes a telephone number of a person in a purchasing, supply-chain, operations or management role. We check each company on the Companies House register first, and we record where each detail came from. Some people hear from us because our director dealt with them personally in an earlier role. For companies previously known to our director through earlier roles at Mentec Engineering and EGL Vaughan, the company may be identified from those employers' customer records; the named individual and their contact details are never taken from them. We do not buy marketing lists, we do not scrape social networks, and we do not guess email addresses.
Why, and on what legal basis. To tell businesses that buy machined and fabricated components that we can supply them. Our legal basis is legitimate interests (Article 6(1)(f)) — our interest in finding customers for our business, weighed against your rights. We have carried out and documented a Legitimate Interests Assessment, and you can request a summary of it at admin@tneltd.com. Under the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations we contact named people at corporate subscribers only; sole traders and ordinary partnerships are excluded.
What we do not do. We do not track whether you open our emails or click links in them. We do not profile you or score you as an individual. The only data we add from outside sources about your employer is company-level information (industry, size, registration, what it makes). Each email is read and sent by a person, never sent automatically. At smaller companies we contact one person. At larger companies we may contact two to four people in purchasing, supply-chain, operations or management roles, one at a time and never on the same day, and we stop at a company once anyone there asks us to. We send up to five emails in all, which may include a short note telling you we hold your details before we write, and we stop as soon as you ask. We may also call you, after checking the Telephone Preference Service and Corporate Telephone Preference Service registers, or write to you at your business address. We do not send LinkedIn messages to people we do not know.
Who else sees it. The record is held in our CRM, Zoho CRM (Zoho Corporation, EU data centres), and in our own email system, Microsoft 365. We do not sell your data or share it with anyone for their own marketing. We also use AI tools from Anthropic to research companies and prepare drafts; a person reads every email before it goes.
How long we keep it. If you do not respond and no business relationship follows, we delete your details within 12 months. If we have told you we hold your details but have not yet written to you about our services, we delete them within 90 days of collecting them unless we have written to you by then. If we have not told you within one month of collecting them, we delete them at that point. If you ask us to stop, we keep the minimum needed — your email address, the date, and the reason — on a permanent suppression list, for the single purpose of making sure you are never contacted again.
How to stop it, immediately and permanently. Reply to any of our emails with "no thanks", or email admin@tneltd.com. You do not have to give a reason. Where you object to direct marketing, that right is absolute — we must stop, and we will, within 24 hours. You also have the rights set out below, including access, correction and erasure, and the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk.
Retention
We keep enquiry and quote data for as long as needed to respond and to manage any resulting relationship, and thereafter as required for our legal, accounting and tax obligations. We delete or anonymise records once they are no longer needed. Retention for business contact data obtained from other sources is set out in that section above.
Your rights
You can ask us for access to, correction of, or deletion of your personal data; ask us to restrict or object to processing; request portability; and withdraw consent at any time. Email admin@tneltd.com and we will respond within one month. If you are unhappy with how we have used your data, tell us first at admin@tneltd.com: we acknowledge a complaint within 30 days and reply without undue delay. You also have the right to complain to the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ico.org.uk).
Changes
If we change this policy we'll update this page and the date above.