Lubricant relabelling allegations at Mannol’s U.K. distributor

Former staff at Lubriage, the exclusive U.K. distributor for SCT’s Mannol brand, allege widespread practice of substituting and falsely relabelling lubricant products, according to Lubes'N'Greases

Lubricant relabelling allegations at Mannol’s U.K. distributor

The U.K. lubricant distributor Lubriage, which is the exclusive U.K. distributor for SCT FZE’s Mannol brand, is facing allegations from former employees who claim that staff systematically substituted customers’ lubricant orders with different products and used false labels to deceive them.

According to Lubes’N’Greases Lube Report, the allegations suggest that management directed staff to print and apply bogus labels. The original labels were meant to be applied by the supplier, SCT FZE in Dubai, before export to the U.K.

Mannol has been aggressively pushing its brand in the U.K., contracting influencers like Becky Evans, AKA Queen B, to attend shows on its behalf alongside her drift sponsorship.

Allegations from Former Staff

Former sales team member Alexander Taylor told Lube Report about the frequency of complaints: “Across the seven months that I worked there … customers would call back saying that items were missing. They’d call back saying that items were damaged. But especially, they’d say that the item was the wrong spec. They’d say this oil is the wrong color or this oil smells funny.”

Taylor initially thought these were honest mistakes until he found a stack of replacement Mannol labels and a spreadsheet on the shared company server. He and another former employee, Patrick Gilmartin, claimed this spreadsheet recorded substituted and relabelled products. Lube Report has seen video evidence of the labels and the spreadsheet.

An anonymous former employee stated: “They would take a similar product, find the closest, and then would get a load of labels, peel off the original labels [from the replacement products] and then put the new ones on.” This employee also claimed they feared losing their job if they refused to follow instructions, even though they suspected the practice was wrong.

Former warehouse worker James Hawkins provided Lube Report with images of around 10 warehouse dockets, dated between September 2024 and June 2025, which included instructions to change labels. He also provided screenshots of WhatsApp messages from management instructing the same, confirming the individual giving instructions was Sergei Litkovskis, the deputy manager at the time. Hawkins told Lube Report, “It was literally every day.”

Gilmartin, a former sales director, corroborated this: “I saw instructions, mostly given by Sergei to a large number of warehouse staff, to swap labels for palets on virtually every full truck order going out.”

Product Discrepancies

The list provided by Taylor shows some 209 cases of product substitution. While some replacements were near matches—such as one high-duty synthetic engine oil being replaced by another with a newer specification—others were significantly different.

One entry showed a synthetic on-road heavy-duty engine oil, Mannol TS-9 UHPD 10W-40 Nano 7109, being substituted by Mannol Multi UTTO WB 101 2701, a universal tractor transmission oil. Mannol’s website warns that the latter product cannot be used as an engine oil. Another entry showed a mineral oil for off-road transmissions and hydraulic systems, Mannol TO-4 Powertrain Oil SAE 10W 2601, substituted by the universal tractor transmission oil, with Mannol’s website stating the replacement is “not recommended to be used as a transmission oil complying to the Caterpillar TO-4 requirements.”

Management Response

Erik Sudheimer, a current official with Lubriage and its parent company SCT, has assumed control following the departure of director Jevgenji Lyzko in June. Sudheimer and Litkovskis, now the loading supervisor, refute the former employees’ accounts.

Sudheimer told Lube Report: “The allegations presented there are most likely fake. The only relabeling that really happened was brand relabeling – for example, changing Fanfaro to Mannol. In my view this is still not acceptable.” Fanfaro is SCT’s budget lubricant brand.

As of publication, Sudheimer had not commented on whether the labels are affixed by SCT FZE at origin and if U.K. staff would have any reason to remove or replace them, as reported by Lubes’N’Greases.

Source: Lubes’N’Greases

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