If you have bought motor oil on Amazon, you have likely come across Mannol. It is an affordable brand with a wide range of products – from 5W-30 synthetics to heavy-duty synthetics for diesel engines. On British Amazon, three Mannol items held top sales positions in their class for a while, even outpacing Castrol. They were sold in the UK by the distributor Lubriage, backed by the Dubai-based SCT Chemicals FZE.
Then, the brand started having problems. A government agency identified dumping practices and imposed high tariffs on the products. An industry watchdog repeatedly failed to confirm the products’ declared specifications. Former warehouse workers spoke of relabeled products. And in the summer of 2026, Lubriage shut down operations entirely, leaving behind debts and unpaid wages.
Almost all of this was detailed, issue after issue, by a single industry publication – Lubes’n’Greases. We took a large batch of its articles about Mannol and SCT – we had two dozen on hand – and looked not at what was written, but at who was writing them and who was being cited. Because the easiest way to verify a story’s objectivity is exactly this: by checking the bylines and the sources.
The results are intriguing.
One Signature
Let’s start with a simple observation. The vast majority of articles about Mannol on this site were published under a single byline: Simon Jones. Not an «editorial board», not a pool of correspondents – one person. And the more the story flared up, the more tightly it revolved around him.
The rest is peripheral and minor. Two early notes from 2021 regarding VLS complaints were written by Tim Sullivan; both were calm, and the second one even had a peaceful resolution: the claim was settled, and the case was closed. The news about the launch of the investigation was reported by Boris Kamchev, who also authored an old 2016 brief about a fire at a Mannol oil warehouse in Bishkek (we will return to this later). A couple more overviews on the VLS topic appeared without an author’s name at all, under the generic byline «Contributor».
In short, upon closer inspection, the phrase «the publication is systematically trashing Mannol» deflates to another reality: the topic in the publication is driven by a single journalist. This in itself is not an accusation. However, it is no longer the stance of an editorial board, but the narrative line of one correspondent.
One Source
Then it gets more interesting. We looked at where the factual basis in all these articles comes from. And almost everywhere, we saw the same name: Mark Lord, director of Aztec Oils.
Aztec is a British oil manufacturer from Bolsover and a direct competitor of Mannol in the same market. Not a regulator, not an independent expert, not an affected car owner. A competitor who, in his own words, lost clients and ten million pounds in sales to Lubriage. Moreover, Lord himself admits: Aztec is also known in the industry for aggressive pricing.
It was Lord who spent four years knocking on doors. An industry veteran with 40 years of experience, he took on Lubriage in 2022 when he learned that his competitor was poaching his clients with unbelievably low prices. First, he wrote to the Serious Fraud Office and the HMRC tax authority – which, according to him, responded with silence. Then he reached the Trade Remedies Authority (TRA). It was his complaint, filed in late April 2024, that launched the government investigation in June of that same year. And he is the primary, and often the only, speaker in almost every article.
Here is how it looks in practice. A large feature about a London conference describes a scene: Lord flips through his presentation, but the slides are black. The organizer’s lawyers had censored his report, leaving him with blank screens. A dramatic image, presented with clear sympathy for the speaker. He is called a man whose campaign turned into a «crusade». His calculations form the basis of the articles. His invoices are shown to the reader as evidence. His remarks – «I feel vindicated», «I am fighting for my company and my industry», «we have seen and are seeing numbers that are impossible to believe», «a small victory in Britain» – migrate from text to text after every new twist. When SCT folded its British business, the first person asked about it was, again, Lord.
We are not claiming that Lord is lying. Ultimately, the agency sided with him – that is a fact. But when almost all the accusatory facts in a story come from the direct commercial rival of the accused, the reader has the right to know this. A chronicle compiled from independent sources is one thing. A story told almost entirely from one side of the barricades is quite another.
The Date When Everything Changed
Now for the chronology – it explains a lot.
Before the summer of 2024, Mannol was written about on the Lubes’n’Greases website rarely and without pressure. The earliest trace is Kamchev’s 2016 note about a warehouse fire in Bishkek, where Mannol oils, among others, burned down. The brand is simply mentioned there, with no conflict – eighty firefighters putting out a blaze, that’s the whole story. Next is the 2021 story: VLS doubted that Mannol Longlife 504/507 5W-30 could meet several mutually exclusive VW approvals simultaneously. Half a year later, a note stated the case was amicably closed: SCT provided documents for a revised formulation, rationalized the claimed specifications, and the issue was resolved. The tone of both notes is professional, without accusations.
The turning point was June 2024. Aztec files a complaint with the TRA, the agency opens an investigation, and from that moment on, the stream of publications becomes denser, and their tone heavier. Extensive texts appear: about failed tests, relabeled products, calculated losses per canister, testimonies of former employees, and the collapse.
The conclusion that dismantles the «publication disliked the brand as such» theory: the wave of negativity was spawned not by editorial animosity, but by a specific proceeding initiated by a competitor. The publication followed the trail of an already-ignited conflict –and the hotter it burned, the denser the coverage became. Almost entirely through the efforts of one author and around one source.
Words That Pass Judgment Before the Facts
The headlines are a separate story. Compare the two approaches within the same publication.
A neutral one, signed by Kamchev: «U.K. Launches Dumping Investigation». Just a fact: the agency started a review.
And now, what came out under Simon Jones’ signature. “Relabelling Rife at Mannol’s U.K. Distributor». «Ireland Backdoor into U.K. for Lube Dumping». «UK Slaps Anti-Dumping Tax». «SCT Abandons U.K. Distributor».
«Rife», «backdoor», «slaps», «abandons» – these are words with a coloring. They pass judgment before the reader has even reached the first paragraph, and immediately, starting from the headline, they hint at who the violator is. In the note about the Irish backdoor, the term «bad actors» appears (though this is a direct quote from Lord, not the author’s words; however, it is the editorial board that places such phrasing in the headline and lead). In the note about brake fluid, the phrase «injury or death» is used.
There is another detail we noticed while analyzing the materials. The publication essentially re-released some articles under new headlines. The note about the repeated failure of the brake fluid and the piece about the TRA failing to reconcile SCT’s accounts appear twice – with the same text, but with rewritten, sharper headlines («Mannol DOT 4 Brake Fluid Fails Repeat Compliance Tests», «Flags Data Gaps»). A minor but telling detail: the tone was made harsher and more emotionally charged even when no new facts emerged.
To be fair: the facts themselves were real. Mannol Brake Fluid DOT 4 3002 did indeed fail all three VLS tests, twice at that, and this involves brakes – so the safety angle is legitimate. But it is one thing to write «the product failed tests», and another to present it with an intonation that pre-emptively biases the reader. The difference seems small, but it works.
The Watchdog and Its Statistics: How to Read the 11 Complaints
Since we brought up VLS, let’s linger on it – this is where perhaps the most underappreciated part of the story is hidden.
VLS (Verification of Lubricant Specifications) is a subsidiary of the United Kingdom Lubricants Association (UKLA), created in 2013. It handles complaints about oils that claim specifications but fail to meet them in reality. According to the publication’s calculations, VLS accumulated 11 product complaints against Mannol – more than for any other company in the watchdog’s files. It sounds like a verdict. But this figure needs to be examined in context, and VLS itself provides it in its review column.
Let’s look at the watchdog’s workload over a timeline. In 12 years of operation, VLS handled over 130 cases. Of these, 88 occurred in the first 9 years – less than 10 cases per year. But the next two and a half years, up to June 2026, yielded 50 cases at once – an average of twenty per year. In other words, the pace of inspections doubled overnight. And this happened exactly during the period when the wave of publications about Mannol began – around 2024. Moreover, in 2024, more than half of the new cases concerned contradictory or unconfirmed OEM approvals.
What is the conclusion? The 11 supposedly problematic Mannol products is a record, but it was set against the backdrop of a general surge in the watchdog’s activity, when inspectors began looking more closely at the entire industry following the dumping case. The same wave hit the market and made it into the articles. It is impossible to distinguish from this data what is truly Mannol’s product quality and what is the effect of increased scrutiny.
And here is what matters for our main topic. In that same VLS review, among the violators of claims, the complainant itself emerges – Aztec. In 2023, the watchdog reviewed a case regarding Aztec Emprotec UHPD 10W-40 oil: the company claimed compliance with the Renault RLD-4 specification, but it was not confirmed during inspection. Aztec quickly corrected the documentation back then, and the case was closed. And in 2026, during an inspection of oils for compliance with Stellantis specifications, Aztec again found itself among those who had to clarify the wording on their labels (alongside Mannol, whose claim for Energy Formula PSA 5W-30 was withdrawn entirely due to a lack of evidence).
The difference in how the information is presented is colossal. Mannol’s failures are clickbait headlines and large, scathing texts. Aztec’s problems are meager lines in a general review, written in passing, as an aside. The accuser and the accused both appear on the watchdog’s lists as companies that had issues with claimed specifications – but a reader simply cannot learn this from the «Mannol-focused» materials.
The Numbers That No One Actually Has
The loudest accusation in the whole story is that Mannol trades at a loss just to capture the market. Let’s break down what this is based on, since Lubes’n’Greases itself provides the calculation.
Take a five-liter canister of Mannol 5W-30 synthetic from Amazon. The average sale price is £16.23, data from the Jungle Scout service. Then the expenses: Amazon’s commission £9.63 (again Jungle Scout), VAT £1.14, shipping and duties £1.06 – Aztec’s estimate. And finally, the purchase price – £8.63 per unit, taken from an invoice of SCT Chemical Trading FZE, provided by Mark Lord and featured in his presentation. Sum it up – it comes to about £20.46 in cost and a loss of roughly £4 per canister. With sales exceeding 37,000 units a year.
Beautiful arithmetic! One problem: almost every component in it is either from an interested party or is an estimate. The purchase price is from an invoice shown by a competitor. Shipping and duties are based on Aztec’s estimate. Some data on other items comes from unnamed «industry sources». The Classic 10W-40 (a £15.50 loss per 20-liter canister) and Energy Premium 5W-30 (an £8.35 loss) were calculated using the same scheme. The scheme is singular, and the source is singular. There was also an invoice for IBCs of hydraulic fluid: Lubriage bought them from SCT for $1,350 and sold them to a client in Ireland for $822.28 – a loss of $527 per unit, and this too is based on a document from Lord’s hands.
What does the other side say? Through its lawyer Kevin Rogers, Lubriage stated bluntly: «We do not recognise a single number put forward by a party who has no idea who pays what to whom». He called Lord’s calculations «magical thinking» and his theory a fabrication about a «vast international conspiracy run from Kettering». The company refused to disclose its actual purchase prices – neither to the TRA nor to the press. Lubriage’s argument, in essence, lies strictly within legal bounds: selling at a loss is legal; supermarkets, for example, have been trading «loss leaders» for decades.
And here is the key fact: no one has the exact numbers. Aztec has estimates and someone else’s invoices. Lubriage has financial statements that its own auditor refused to certify: Shah & Co wrote in its 2023 conclusion that it could not verify the inventory volume or where the money was going, and therefore «was unable to obtain sufficient appropriate audit evidence». Later, the TRA itself reported that it failed to reconcile the data submitted by the Dubai-based SCT Chemicals with its own accounts after a remote audit and a site visit (a news story the publication also released twice, by the way). And even later, Eric Sudheimer, SCT’s development director, stated that Lubriage’s past accounts could differ from audited figures by about $70 million, blaming the «false accounts» on former director Evgeny Lyzko. And here it is worth looking closely at the numbers around which passions boil. According to public balance sheets submitted to UK regulators, Lubriage’s gross profit grew from £388,000 in 2019 to over £5 million by 2021. Inventories ballooned at the same pace: year-end inventory value jumped from £866,785 in 2019 to £21.2 million in 2023, while unpaid client invoices reached £40 million – almost double the value of the goods in the warehouse. Lyzko himself, of Lithuanian descent, created Lubriage in 2015 as an online store, and simultaneously founded several other UK firms – Aslanol, Carousel Car Parts, Gear Cube, Truck Cube, and Circle Auto Lounge – all of which are now liquidated. By July 2019, Aslanol went bankrupt, control of Lubriage passed to Mannol Holdings, and Eric Sudheimer became the majority owner. According to his version, the company’s finances were previously mismanaged; Lyzko himself declined to comment. In other words, absolutely no one can present hard nubers – not the accuser, not the accused, not the regulator, not the auditor.
In this situation, the competitor’s calculations in the articles are sometimes honestly labeled «according to Aztec’s estimate», and other times presented as an established fact. The boundary between verified and presumed is blurred.
In fairness, the publication makes a good-faith effort in its largest feature by providing an independent estimate from its base oil columnist, Ray Masson. He calculates the cost from the other end—base oil plus additive package plus the same fees—and arrives at about £15.12, or £15.83 if not using Russian raw materials. Against the Amazon price of £16.23. It cuts it close, but it is not a loss. This is an honest attempt to double-check the data, although it too is built on assumptions: what oil, from what raw material, using what logistics. By the way, the specification of that canister – API CH-4, a diesel truck standard from way back in 1998, deemed obsolete in 2009 – actually permits cheap Group I base oil. Therefore, the low cost may well be explained by cheap raw materials, rather than trading at a loss.
Who Was Actually Hit by the Tariffs
There is a storyline here that gets almost lost behind the figure of Mannol, which is a shame. The tariffs hit more than just the «main culprit».
When the TRA rolled out the preliminary tariffs, a strange thing became apparent. The three named companies – SCT Chemical FZE, Chempioil, and the distributor Lubriage – received a tariff of about 25%. But all other exporters from the UAE, who simply did not participate in the early stages of the investigation, received almost 60%. This is despite the fact that none of them were accused of dumping. Meaning the «main violator» got off with a rate half that of companies against which no claims were made at all.
Naturally, those “others” were outraged. Atif Naseem, director of Atlantic Grease & Lubricants from Sharjah, said bluntly: we have suffered severely and do not understand why heavy tariffs were slapped on us, while the party named as the main dumper pays the lowest rate. Both Atlantic and another manufacturer, Oscar, claim they only learned about the investigation when the final decision was issued. «We are paying for someone else’s sins», Oscar’s statement read. The TRA responded that it used open data from hundreds of companies.
The finale of this plot turned out even more bizarre. In the final decision, Atlantic received a 0% tariff, and Oscar 34.55%, even though it wasn’t accused of dumping either. Lord, tellingly, remained dissatisfied here too – but over a different fact: he considered the zero rate for Atlantic a «wide-open backdoor» and questioned the calculations. The TRA did not respond to his complaints. How exactly the agency performed its calculations and what was presented to Atlantic and Oscar remained behind the scenes.
The spread of final rates for Dubai companies was as follows: Chempioil and SCT Chemicals at 34.35% each, Atlantic at 0%, and others from the UAE at 34.55%. In addition, the «Irish backdoor» surfaced: due to the special border regime between Ireland and Northern Ireland, tariffs effectively cannot be collected there, meaning goods can enter via a workaround. This was, again, pointed out by Lord.
The Collapse of the Distributor
By 2026, the story reached the climax of its British chapter. In June 2026, Lubriage shut down operations – quietly, without an announcement in the registry, leaving debts, unpaid wages, and questions. A former employee shared that as early as March, the Kettering warehouse began to be «systematically emptied»: inventory, equipment, and assets were driven away while people were not paid. One of the creditors filed a petition for compulsory liquidation. Another British company, Revolution Oil, managed to pick up the distribution of Mannol in February but soon severed ties with SCT. By that time, Eric Sudheimer had exited SCT Chemicals and did not respond to inquiries.
What Was Done According to the Rules
In order not to slip into the same one-sidedness we are criticizing, let’s describe the flip side. It does exist.
The Mannol side is given a voice in the articles, and regularly so. Back in the first news piece about the start of the investigation, the company’s response is cited: prices were lowered out of necessity, following aggressive dumping by competitors, and some goods had to be sold at a loss due to lengthened delivery times – ships were diverting around Africa due to Houthi attacks in the Red Sea. Articles about the TRA decisions quote Lubriage’s lawyer and its official objections: «we are deeply concerned», «the proposed measures are unjustified», as well as his argument that the preliminary report relies on data from as late as September 1, 2024, submitted before the company provided its detailed materials. In the feature about relabeling, Eric Sudheimer responds to the accusations, admits to «brand relabeling» – swapping from budget Fanfaro to Mannol – and calls the rest «most likely fake». And in the large March 2026 feature, the company was allowed to present its version in detail: they claim the business is being restructured, former management is responsible for the false reporting, and the British market remains important to them.
This is an important detail. It means the facts do not support the theory that «the publication refuses to let the brand respond». The right of reply is respected. Judgments in headlines – yes, they happen. A skew in sources – yes, it is obvious. But nobody is being silenced.
The Bottom Line
If you put all the available publications together, it becomes clear that this is not about a conspiracy or persecution. A bias emerges – and this bias has a name.
One signature under the majority of the publications. One key source, and that is a direct competitor. Headlines where judgment precedes fact, sometimes dialed up retroactively upon republication. Key calculations relying on data from an interested party, despite the fact that no one possesses hard numbers – not the accuser, not the accused, not the auditor, nor, by its own admission, the agency itself regarding the Dubai accounts. Watchdog statistics where «Mannol’s record» is presented prominently, while the complainant’s own minor sins are in fine print in a general review. A calm «pre-conflict» past that abruptly shifted to a dense stream of negativity exactly on the day the competitor filed a complaint.
Put this all together, and the conclusion suggests itself: a significant part of this story was written not by a journalist, but by Mark Lord. He filed the complaint that started it all. He supplied the publication with calculations, invoices, and presentation slides. He commented on every twist – from the first tariffs to the collapse of Lubriage – and it is his voice that rings out in almost every piece. And his interest is not abstract, but direct and financial: the competitor, in his own words, cost Aztec clients and ten million pounds in sales. The man who had such a sum on the line turned out to be simultaneously the main complainant, the main supplier of facts, and their main commentator. It was his version of events that became the primary, and often the only, narrative for the reader.
None of this negates the TRA’s decisions. They were made, they are official, and that is a separate reality we are not attempting to dispute. Dumping might have occurred. Relabeling might have taken place. Test failures are documented. The collapse of Lubriage is an accomplished fact. But the story the reader pieces together from these publications is predominantly assembled from one side – by the hands of one journalist and through the voice of one interested source, a direct competitor of the accused. And knowing this is a right, not a privilege, for the reader.
David Prior
David Prior is the editor of Today News, responsible for the overall editorial strategy. He is an NCTJ-qualified journalist with over 20 years’ experience, and is also editor of the award-winning hyperlocal news title Altrincham Today. His LinkedIn profile is here.
