The company accused two brothers of colluding to win business – but those claims are denied and are about to be tested in the KwaZulu-Natal High Court.
This is a story of two brothers – one previously employed by Dunlop Industrial Products at its Howick, KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) plant, and the other a supplier of electrical and other services to the same company.
The brothers are Marlen and Megan Naidu. Marlen is a director Premier Electrical and Automation, based in Verulam in KZN, which had been a supplier to Dunlop Industrial for years.
Problem with the brothers working with Dunlop
The relationship seems to have been relatively problem-free until late 2025 when Dunlop stopped paying within the usual 30-day period after receipt of invoice.
Premier continued supplying services on the assumption that payment would eventually come, but that’s not what happened. The bills continued to mount with no sign of payment. There’s no dispute about that.
The unpaid invoices continued to stack up, eventually accumulating to R11.5 million. That’s when Premier decided to take the matter to court.
Allegations
Dunlop Industrial, since renamed Rema Tip Top, is defending the matter, arguing that Marlen was colluding with his brother Megan, then employed as a reliability engineer at Dunlop, to gain confidential access to competitor information and swing business his brother’s way – which is strongly denied by the Naidu brothers.
Megan was subsequently dismissed by Dunlop.
Dunlop says Megan had a duty to disclose the relationship with Marlen, and had it known this fact, it would not have entered into any agreements with Premier.
Premier’s legal team refutes this version, saying Megan was remote from the decision-making process and there had never been any accusations of collusion in the prior years. Nor was the relationship a secret: disclosing it was not a requirement of his employment contract.
Premier claims these accusations only surfaced as an after-thought when Dunlop was slapped with a court suit demanding payment.
In papers before the KwaZulu-Natal High Court, Premier says it interacted with various Dunlop divisions, including its belting, mixing and technical, and industrial hose units.
Agreements
In October 2021, Dunlop signed a series of credit agreements in the names of each of its divisions.
Once signed, and an invoice was presented, this was an acknowledgement of the amount due and payable to Premier, which had to be settled within 30 days. There were various other agreements, written and oral, that flowed from this.
Premier’s particulars of claim show that from December 2024 to June 2025, some 20 agreements for the supply of equipment and services totalling more than R11.5 million were entered into between Dunlop and Premier. Of these 20 agreements, eight were supported by purchase orders, and a further 12 were not.
Unpaid invoices
Premier says it complied with the terms of these agreements by providing the goods and services requested within the time frames specified.
By May 2025, the relationship between the two companies had inexplicably soured, while invoices dating back to December last year remained unpaid.
Premier staff were denied access to Dunlop’s premises to complete the work per the agreements, and Dunlop was now using equipment supplied by Premier without paying for it.
Dunlop denies this in its papers.
Despite repeated demands, the invoices were not paid, amounting to what Premier says is a repudiation of those agreements.
Court application
Premier has refused to accept this repudiation and is demanding payment in full, with interest accumulating at 2.5% a year.
It also wants the court to ensure its staff have access to Dunlop’s site so it can complete the work already agreed to.
In Dunlop’s response, it says it changed its name to Rema Tip Top Africa in January 2026 and denies it entered into any credit or other agreements with Premier.
It then claims Marlen Naidu, director of Premier, is the brother of Megan Naidu, reliability engineer at Dunlop who was responsible for the installation, maintenance and operation of all electrical components at Dunlop’s Howick premises.
Relation of the two men
Dunlop claims it was not aware of this relationship between the two brothers and that Megan was instrumental in arranging Premier as the supplier of goods and services.
“[Premier] was in the circumstances under a duty to disclose the relationship of [Megan Naidu],” claims Dunlop in its papers, and had it known of the relationship it would not have entered into the agreements.
On the basis of this alleged non-disclosure, Dunlop had decided to cancel any credit facility agreements between the two companies.
Dunlop goes on to claim that Megan supplied his brother with technical drawings and confidential information from competitors that would presumably assist in winning business – though there is no evidence of this in the court papers.
The allegation of collusion remains unanswered on papers, and will have to now go to trial in the KwaZulu-Natal High Court.
Marlen Naidu responded to Moneyweb via his legal representative Jashiel Singh Attorneys, vehemently denying any collusion in securing the work, adding that his legal team looks forward to cross-examining Dunlop representatives at trial.
Moneyweb reached out to Dunlop (now Rema Tip Top) for comment but did not receive a reply at the time of publication.
This article was republished from Moneyweb. Read the original here.