Former employees of United Kingdom lubricant distributor Lubriage told Lube Report that company staff systematically replaced customers’ orders with other products and used false labels to mislead them into believing they were receiving the goods they ordered.
The allegations included management directing staff to print and attach bogus labels. The original labels were applied by the suppliers SCT FZE in Dubai before export to the U.K., where Lubriage is SCT’s exclusive distributor.
“Across the seven months that I worked there … customers would call back saying that items were missing,” Alexander Taylor told Lube Report. “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 worked at Lubriage on the sales team and at first thought these kinds of complaints were normal and due to honest mistakes. But then he found a sheaf of Mannol labels used to replace originals and a spreadsheet on the shared company server that he and another former employee, Patrick Gilmartin, said was used to record products that had been substituted and relabeled. Lube Report has seen both a video of the labels taken by Taylor and the spreadsheet.
“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,” said one employee who asked to remain anonymous. The same anonymous employee also said he feared losing his job if he refused to do as he was told, even though he suspected it wasn’t right.
A current official with Lubriage and its parent company SCT, Erik Sudheimer, said he has found no hard evidence of relabeling at Lubriage. However, the people Lube Report spoke to also shared images of about 10 warehouse dockets, dated between September 2024 and June 2025, that included instructions to change labels, as well as screenshots of Whatsapp text messages from management to junior staff instructing the same. James Hawkins, a former warehouse worker, provided the docket images and verified their authenticity. Hawkins also provided the screenshots and confirmed that an individual giving instructions was Sergei Litkovskis, the deputy manager at the time.
Hawkins also described how he was handed a docket requesting several pallet-loads of one product and to ask his colleague to print out labels for a different one. When he asked why, his supervisor said the customer changed orders but that the alternative was better. Hawkins’ colleague said the substitute was inferior but they didn’t want to lose custom.
“It was literally every day,” Hawkins told Lube Report.
The list provided by Taylor shows some 209 cases of products being substituted for those that were ordered. In some cases, the product listed as the replacement is a near match for the one that was ordered.
One entry shows two intermediate bulk containers of Mannol TS-9 UHPD Nano 7109 being replaced by TS-7 UHPD 10W-40 Blue 7107. Both are synthetic 10W-40 multigrade engine oils for heavy-duty diesel engines. Nano is a low-ash formulation and is listed as meeting API CJ-4, API SN, ACEA E8 and ACEA E11 industry performance specifications. Blue is recommended for high-speed engines and is said to meet API CK-4, a newer spec than CJ-4 and the same ACEA specs.
In other cases, the products were somewhat different. Another entry showed 60 drums of Mannol TS-7 UHPD 10W-40 Blue 7107 were substituted by Mannol TS-18 SHPD 15W-40 7118. Both are advertised as all-weather synthetic motor oil for heavy-duty and high-speed diesel engines, although they have different viscosities.
In some cases, the replacement differed significantly. Another entry indicates that Mannol TO-4 Powertrain Oil SAE 10W 2601 was substituted by Mannol Multi UTTO WB 101 2701. The former is a mineral oil for off-road hydraulic systems, transmissions and gearboxes, designed for uses such as construction, mining and agriculture, whereas 2701 is a mineral universal tractor transmission oil. Mannol’s website states that 2701 “is not recommended to be used as a transmission oil complying to the Caterpillar TO-4 requirements.”
Another entry shows TS-9 UHPD 10W-40 Nano 7109 – the synthetic on-road heavy-duty engine oil mentioned above – was substituted by Mannol Multi UTTO WB 101 2701, the universal tractor transmission oil mentioned above. These are from two different product categories, and the specs for MN2701 on Mannol’s website warn that it cannot be used as an engine oil.
“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,” said Gilmartin, a former sales director.
The owner of Lubriage, Sudheimer, has assumed control after the departure of director Jevgenji Lyzko in June. Both Sudheimer and Litkovskis, who is currently the loading supervisor at the company, refute their former employees’ accounts.
“The allegations presented there are most likely fake,” Sudheimer told Lube Report. “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.
By the time of publication, Sudheimer had yet to comment when asked whether labels are affixed by the supplier SCT FZE at their origin in Dubai and whether staff at Lubriage in the U.K. would have any need to remove or replace them.