Information about our use of cookies

Our website uses cookies to distinguish you from other users of our website. This helps us to provide you with a good experience when you browse our website and also allows us to improve our site. By continuing to browse the site, you are agreeing to our use of cookies.

A cookie is a small file of letters and numbers that we store on your browser or the hard drive of your computer if you agree. Cookies contain information that is transferred to your computer’s hard drive.

We use the following cookies:

  • Strictly necessary cookies. These are cookies that are required for the operation of our website. They include, for example, cookies that enable you to log into secure areas of our website, use a shopping cart or make use of e-billing services.
  • Analytical/performance cookies. They allow us to recognise and count the number of visitors and to see how visitors move around our website when they are using it. This helps us to improve the way our website works, for example, by ensuring that users are finding what they are looking for easily.
  • Functionality cookies. These are used to recognise you when you return to our website. This enables us to personalise our content for you, greet you by name and remember your preferences (for example, your choice of language or region).
  • Targeting cookies. These cookies record your visit to our website, the pages you have visited and the links you have followed. We will use this information to make our website and the advertising displayed on it more relevant to your interests. We may also share this information with third parties for this purpose.

You can find more information about the individual cookies we use and the purposes for which we use them in the table below:

CookieNamePurposeMore information
GOOGLE ANALYTICS (utma, utmb, utmc & utmz) ga, _gidThese are persistent cookies and as such last longer than the user’s session. These cookies are performance cookies and are used as part of our web analytics activity to monitor traffic and compile reporting about how users are using our websites. The cookies are used to capture anonymous data about a user's journey around our website and the information is aggregated in order to allow us to analyse trends and to make improvements to our website. Below is a more detailed explanation of each type of Google Analytics cookie:

  • utma - this cookie keeps track of the number of times a visitor has been to our website, when their first visit was and when their last visit occurred;

  • utmb and utmc - these cookies work together to calculate how long a visit takes. utmb takes a timestamp of the exact moment in time when a visitor enters our site, while utmc takes a timestamp of the exact moment in time when a visitor leaves our site. utmb expires at the end of the session. utmc waits 30 minutes and then it expires (this time lag is required to ensure that no further page view activity occurs);

  • utmz - this cookie tracks where the visitor came from e.g. what search engine was used, what link was clicked on, what keyword was used and where in the world the user accessed our website from.

Google Analytics Cookie Usage on Websites

Please note that third parties (including, for example, advertising networks and providers of external services like web traffic analysis services) may also use cookies, over which we have no control. These cookies are likely to be analytical/performance cookies or targeting cookies

You block cookies by activating the setting on your browser that allows you to refuse the setting of all or some cookies. However, if you use your browser settings to block all cookies (including essential cookies) you may not be able to access all or parts of our site.

Except for essential cookies, all cookies will expire after 2 years.