Privacy Policy

With this privacy policy we inform you which personal data we process, how, where and for what purpose, in connection with the Your Virtual Cold Chain Assistant (Your VCCA) website yourvcca.org and our related offers. We also inform you about the rights of persons whose data we process.

For individual or additional offers and services, supplementary privacy notices and other legal documents, such as Terms and Conditions or Terms of Use, may apply. The Coldtivate mobile app has its own Privacy Notice, available on the mobile application.

Our offer is subject to Swiss data protection law and any applicable foreign data protection law, in particular the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The European Commission recognises that Swiss data protection law ensures an adequate level of data protection.

Your VCCA is an initiative of BASE Foundation (Basel Agency for Sustainable Energy) and Empa (Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology).

BASE Foundation (Stiftung BASE)
Elisabethenstrasse 22
4051 Basel
Switzerland
info@yourvcca.org

Responsibility for the processing of personal data: BASE Foundation is the data controller for all personal data collected through this website. Where we work with third-party partners who also process your data, we will inform you of this at the point of collection.

Terms and definitions

Personal data is any information relating to an identified or identifiable person. A data subject is a person whose personal data is processed. Processing means any handling of personal data, irrespective of the means and procedures used, in particular the collection, storage, use, modification, disclosure, archiving, deletion and destruction of personal data.

The European Economic Area (EEA) comprises the European Union (EU) as well as Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway.

We process personal data in accordance with Swiss data protection law (the revised Federal Act on Data Protection, FADP) and the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). We process personal data only where at least one of the following legal bases applies:

  • Consent (Art. 6 para. 1 lit. a GDPR)
  • Performance of a contract to which the individual is party (Art. 6 para. 1 lit. b GDPR)
  • Legitimate interests pursued by BASE, where these are not overridden by the interests or rights of the individuals concerned (Art. 6 para. 1 lit. f GDPR)

Under the Swiss FADP, our processing is lawful provided it complies with the FADP’s data protection principles and does not infringe your personality rights. Where it does, we rely on consent, an overriding interest, or law (Art. 31(1) FADP).

Nature, scope and purpose

We process personal data for as long as is necessary for the respective purpose or purposes, or as required by law. Personal data whose processing is no longer required is anonymised or deleted. Persons whose data we process have a fundamental right to deletion.

We process the personal data that is necessary to provide our services in a lasting, user-friendly, secure and reliable manner. Such personal data can fall into the categories of inventory and contact data, browser and device data, content data, meta or marginal data, usage data, location data, and contract data.

As a matter of principle, we process personal data only with the consent of the data subject, unless the processing is permitted for other legal reasons, for example to fulfil a contract with the data subject and for corresponding pre-contractual measures, to safeguard our overriding legitimate interests, because the processing is evident from the circumstances, or after prior information.

In this context, we process in particular information that a data subject voluntarily submits to us when contacting us (for example by post, e-mail, contact form, social media or telephone), or when registering for the Your VCCA Onboarding Kit (kit.yourvcca.org) or for our events and programmes (such as the Your VCCA Catalyst Programme). Onboarding Kit registration data is stored on our own website system and is not passed to external services.

We may store such information, for example, in an address book or with comparable tools. If you transmit personal data about third parties to us, you are obliged to ensure data protection towards such third parties and the accuracy of such personal data.

We also process personal data that we receive from third parties, obtain from publicly accessible sources or collect when making our offer available, if and to the extent that such processing is permitted by law.

BASE maintains a contact database for Your VCCA. Depending on the activity through which your data was collected, such as Onboarding Kit registration, event registration or programme participation, we hold your name, e-mail address and relevant professional details. This data is used solely to communicate updates relevant to Your VCCA and to manage participation. It is not shared with third parties for marketing purposes. You may unsubscribe or request deletion of your data at any time by contacting info@yourvcca.org.

For project beneficiaries (for example, smallholder farmers and cold room operators participating in Your VCCA projects), we also collect contact data and, where relevant to the project, income-related and gender-disaggregated data, used to deliver the project and to report impact to donors in aggregate. You may object to this processing at any time; doing so will not affect any project benefits already committed to you. Data entered in the Coldtivate app is covered by the Coldtivate Privacy Notice.

We may have personal data processed by commissioned third parties, or process it jointly with or with the help of third parties, or transfer it to third parties. Such third parties are in particular providers whose services we use. We ensure appropriate data protection with such third parties.

Such third parties are generally located in Switzerland and the European Economic Area (EEA). They may also be located in other states and territories, provided that their data protection law ensures adequate data protection in the opinion of the Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner (FDPIC) and, where the GDPR applies, in the opinion of the European Commission, or if adequate data protection is ensured for other reasons, such as a contractual agreement, in particular on the basis of standard contractual clauses, or by appropriate certification. For third parties in the United States of America (USA), certification under the EU-U.S. or Swiss-U.S. Data Privacy Framework can ensure adequate data protection. Exceptionally, such a third party may be located in a country without adequate data protection, provided that the legal requirements are met, such as the express consent of the data subject.

You have the right to:

  • Access your personal data.
  • Request rectification or erasure.
  • Restrict or object to processing.
  • Withdraw consent at any time (where processing is based on consent).
  • Lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority: the FDPIC in Switzerland, or your national data protection authority if you are located in the EU.

Requests should be sent to: info@yourvcca.org.

Access to our online offer uses transport encryption (SSL/TLS, in particular with the Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure, HTTPS). Most browsers mark transport encryption with a padlock in the address bar.

We take appropriate technical and organisational measures to ensure data protection and in particular data security. Despite such measures, the processing of personal data on the Internet can always have security gaps. We therefore cannot guarantee absolute data security.

Access to our online offer is, as with all Internet use, subject to mass surveillance without cause or suspicion and other monitoring by security authorities in Switzerland, the European Union (EU), the United States of America (USA) and other countries. We cannot directly influence the corresponding processing of personal data by intelligence services, police and other security authorities.

Cookies

We may use cookies on our website. Cookies, both our own (first-party cookies) and those of third parties whose services we use (third-party cookies), are data in text form stored in your browser. Cookies cannot execute programs or transmit malware such as Trojans and viruses.

When you visit our website, cookies can be stored temporarily in your browser as “session cookies” or for a certain period as so-called permanent cookies. Session cookies are automatically deleted when you close your browser.

Permanent cookies make it possible, in particular, to recognise your browser on your next visit to our website and thus, for example, to measure the reach of our website. Permanent cookies can also be used for online marketing.

You can deactivate or delete cookies in your browser settings at any time, in whole or in part. Without cookies, our website may no longer be fully available. Where necessary, we actively ask for your express consent to the use of cookies.

Server log files

We may collect the following information for each access to our website, provided that it is transmitted by your browser to our server infrastructure or can be determined by our web server: date and time including time zone, Internet Protocol (IP) address, access status (HTTP status code), operating system including user interface and version, browser including language and version, individual sub-pages of our website accessed including the amount of data transferred, and the last website accessed in the same browser window (referrer).

We store such information, which may also constitute personal data, in server log files. This information is necessary to provide our online offer in a lasting, user-friendly and reliable manner and to ensure data security and thus in particular the protection of personal data, also by or with the help of third parties.

Tracking pixels

We may use tracking pixels on our website. Tracking pixels, also known as web beacons, including those of third parties whose services we use, are small, usually invisible images that are automatically retrieved when you visit our website. Tracking pixels can record the same information as server log files.

We may send you e-mail communications related to Your VCCA activities for which you have registered, such as the Onboarding Kit or the Catalyst Programme. You can ask us to stop sending these communications at any time by contacting info@yourvcca.org.

We use third-party services to provide our offer in a lasting, user-friendly, secure and reliable manner. Such services also serve to embed content into our website. Such services, such as hosting and storage services and video services, require your Internet Protocol (IP) address, as they cannot otherwise transmit the corresponding content. Such services may be located outside Switzerland and the European Economic Area (EEA), provided that adequate data protection is ensured.

For their own security-related, statistical and technical purposes, third parties whose services we use may also process data in connection with our offer and from other sources, including cookies, log files and tracking pixels, in aggregated, anonymised or pseudonymised form.

Our website and Onboarding Kit are hosted by Metanet (Switzerland). Metanet processes personal data on our behalf as a data processor.

Our Onboarding Kit embeds videos from YouTube and map applications built with Google Earth Engine, both provided by Google. For users in the EEA and Switzerland, YouTube is provided by Google Ireland Limited, Gordon House, Barrow Street, Dublin 4, Ireland. When you play an embedded video or load a map application, Google receives information about your visit, including your IP address, and may set cookies. This information may be transmitted to and stored on Google servers in the USA. Google LLC is certified under the EU-U.S. and Swiss-U.S. Data Privacy Framework. Further information is available in Google’s Privacy Policy.

BASE uses Google Workspace (including Gmail and Google Drive) to store and manage internal communications and documents. This means that some personal data may be processed on Google’s servers. Google acts as a data processor on behalf of BASE under a data processing agreement, in compliance with GDPR and FADP requirements.

BASE uses AI-assisted tools for internal operational purposes, including summarisation and analysis of professional correspondence and documents. These tools operate under data processing agreements that prohibit the use of BASE’s data for model training. Personal data is not used to make automated decisions about individuals. If you have questions about how your data may be processed in this context, please contact us at info@yourvcca.org.

Where these tools involve transferring data outside Switzerland or the EU/EEA, this is covered by the EU-U.S. or Swiss-U.S. Data Privacy Framework, or by standard contractual clauses together with a completed transfer impact assessment where the provider does not hold Data Privacy Framework certification.

For data access, correction or deletion requests, please contact us at info@yourvcca.org. Your request will be handled by BASE’s Data Protection Contact.

We updated this privacy policy on 27 October 2026.

We review this notice at least every three years, or sooner if our processing activities change materially.

We may adapt and supplement this privacy policy at any time. We will inform you of such adaptations and additions in a suitable form, in particular by publishing the current privacy policy on our website.

This is our current valid privacy policy from 27.10.2026.