Robinsons Cepac Disability Discrimination

Robinsons built a household name out of concentrate. Start with something strong, add water, and make it stretch.

The Robinsons Cepac disability discrimination file runs in the opposite direction. Start with a simple rule: do not discriminate against disabled people. Add an agency, a packaging supplier, a disappearing interview, contradictory paperwork, a Tribunal-manufactured conduct case and a five-figure costs order. Keep diluting until nobody in procurement can taste responsibility.

Robinsons is not some obscure label hiding on the bottom shelf. Carlsberg Britvic calls it the UK’s number-one squash brand, and nearly 40 per cent of UK households buy it. Cepac chose to put Robinsons in its POS Portfolio 2026. That makes Cepac’s conduct a legitimate question for Robinsons and its owner.

The Fuckery, Concentrated

On 21 August 2024, Page Outsourcing rang me about a role at Cepac and offered me an interview for the week after the bank holiday. We discussed the pay. I disclosed that my employment gap was connected to my mental health. Page would pass my details on, then call again to confirm an exact mutually agreeable time.

I am still waiting for that call.

My same-day WhatsApp conversation recorded the interview and pay before any claim, pleading or TCAP article existed. Page and Cepac later denied that Page had offered the interview. Cepac’s ET3 then placed two awkward passages beside each other: paragraph 12 distances Cepac from knowledge of my disability, while paragraph 14 refers to recruitment information recording health problems behind my employment gap.

Newcastle Employment Tribunal never decided that conflict. Instead, its administration obscured and misrouted the file, failed to surface medical and procedural context, treated respondent correspondence as the priority service and repackaged my escalating distress as misconduct. The respondents then surrounded the original recruitment claim with hundreds of messages, posts and complaints. The Tribunal used the resulting character file to declare a fair trial impossible, strike out the discrimination claims and order me to pay £20,000.

In other words, the institution manufactured the conduct case, punished the reaction to its own process and left Cepac’s denial untested. That is the fuckery. Everything else is cardboard around it.

Make The Unboring Choice

Cepac’s 2026 portfolio places Robinsons in its “Theatrical Displays” section. The display carries a useful instruction: “MAKE THE UNBORING CHOICE!”

All right, then. Choose the contemporaneous WhatsApp record over the later litigation position. Put paragraphs 12 and 14 beside each other. Read Carlsberg’s actual supplier code instead of the decorative ESG sludge corporations pour across their websites.

Cepac published the Robinsons display to demonstrate its commercial work. The brand gives Cepac credibility, and the cardboard carries Robinsons into shops. Carlsberg Britvic can therefore answer a simple opening question: does Cepac currently supply Robinsons or another group brand?

If the work is historic, give the dates. If it remains current, apply the supplier rules.

Page Rang And Offered The Interview

Page rang on 21 August 2024 and offered the interview. The proposed week followed the bank holiday. We discussed a training wage moving towards the higher figure, and Page learned why my mental health had created a gap in my employment.

However, the promised confirmation call never arrived. Instead, Page and Cepac later recast the conversation as an agency screening exercise that produced no interview offer.

Here is the record made before the lawyers arrived.

WhatsApp conversation recording the outcome of the Page Outsourcing recruitment call on 21 August 2024. — Sent on the day Page rang, before the Employment Tribunal claim, the pleadings or TCAP coverage existed.

The image records the outcome immediately after the call: an interview the following week and the training wage discussed. A friend replied the next day. In addition, the recipient retained the conversation and later gave a witness statement confirming where it came from and what surrounded it.

No campaign existed. No litigation strategy existed. Page had offered me an interview, and I told a friend at the time.

Paragraph 12 Meets Paragraph 14

Cepac’s own pleaded response creates the next problem.

Paragraph 12 distances Cepac from knowledge of my disability within the recruitment process. Paragraph 14 refers to recruitment information saying my absence from employment arose from health problems.

In short, health information entered the recruitment chain. The real questions concern what Page recorded, who could see it, what reached Cepac and why the promised interview confirmation vanished after the disclosure.

Paragraph 14 identifies the information. Who received it? If nobody at Cepac saw it, why did Cepac plead it? Any recipient inside Cepac would collide with the distance created in paragraph 12. Page’s interview denial must also explain the same-day WhatsApp record.

Cepac ET3 Grounds of Resistance Sections 12 and 14 concerning knowledge of Lee Thompson’s disability — Cepac’s ET3 Grounds of Resistance. Sections 12 and 14 create a material tension over knowledge of disability

Those questions needed witnesses, disclosure and findings. They got none of them.

How Newcastle Manufactured The Conduct Case

Newcastle did not encounter a free-standing conduct problem. It built one.

The administration refused to establish what material judges could see, sent correspondence to the wrong tribunal office and failed to surface the medical, procedural and complaint context beside the angry reactions. Respondent correspondence received rapid answers while claimant applications and file questions disappeared into fog.

That asymmetry produced the raw material. The respondents supplied around 150 communications and blog items plus 181 posts on X. A recruitment claim about a vanished interview became a 331-item character dossier. Employment Judge T. R. Smith then claimed to review a 1,941-page file in three hours and blamed me as its “principle culprit”. The institution compressed its own chaos into personal misconduct.

Three days before the decisive hearing, Employment Judge Brain refused the postponement required to make participation safe and intelligible. Employment Judge James then heard the respondents in my absence on 24 April 2026. Their untested professional discomfort, counsel problems and witness fear became proof that a fair trial could not happen.

The Tribunal manufactured the environment, punished my reaction to it and used the punishment to erase the discrimination claim.

£20,000 For The Manufactured Fuck-Over

The strike-out removed the interview offer, mental-health disclosure, WhatsApp record and ET3 contradiction from merits examination. No judgment weighed Page’s account against the contemporaneous message. No findings reconciled paragraphs 12 and 14. Newcastle buried the recruitment claim beneath the conduct case it had helped create.

As a result, the respondents’ schedules put their combined legal spending above £50,000. They obtained £20,000 through summary assessment. An ordinary disabled applicant therefore left a discrimination case owing five figures, while the companies kept an untested denial.

That is not a victory on the discrimination evidence. It is a £20,000 invoice for Newcastle Employment Tribunal manufacturing the reason never to decide it.

Carlsberg Wrote The Rule

Carlsberg’s Supplier and Licensee Code of Conduct took effect on 1 June 2025. It applies to suppliers, service providers and labour providers, including employment agencies. The code covers permanent, temporary, contract and migrant workers throughout the supply chain.

Suppliers must prevent discrimination in all employment decisions, including discrimination based on disability. Carlsberg can demand self-assessments, conduct audits, require corrective action and terminate agreements. Refusing to cooperate with screening counts as a breach.

Britvic Soft Drinks Limited’s modern-slavery statement dated 30 June 2026 puts packaging inside its supply chain. It also places compliance clauses and supplier-code references in procurement templates. The group opens its Speak Up platform to third parties and says it thoroughly investigates possible policy breaches.

The older Britvic rulebook points the same way. Its March 2023 human-rights position called integrity non-negotiable and extended human-rights expectations across the value chain. Britvic’s 2022 statement described supplier screening, contractual standards and SMETA audits covering labour and ethics.

The company already owns the machinery. It merely needs the nerve to switch it on.

Britvic Knows What A Merits Win Looks Like

Britvic has already won a disability case on the merits.

In M Griffiths v Britvic Soft Drinks Ltd, the Tribunal sat for six days, considered a 235-page bundle, heard the claimant and two Britvic witnesses, allowed cross-examination and issued 37 pages of reasons. It rejected every claim and found that the claimant had not established disability under the Equality Act at the relevant time. The Tribunal also explained why the remaining evidence would not support the discrimination claims.

That is a merits victory: documents, witnesses, questions, findings and reasons directed at the allegations.

Newcastle’s manufactured conduct strike-out delivered none of that. Carlsberg Britvic knows the difference.

Another public case, V Phatty v Extraman Ltd and Britvic Soft Drinks Ltd, involved an agency worker, race-discrimination and victimisation claims. The claimant later withdrew the claims against Britvic before the final hearing. Again, the structure matters: brand, agency, applicant and disputed information. Large companies have seen this machinery before and should control it.

The £16.9 Million Sports Cap

Britvic recalled Fruit Shoot and Hydro in July 2012 after identifying a problem with the newly launched sports cap. Its annual report put the cost at £16.9 million and said the recall constrained revenue growth.

The company identified a risk, pulled the product, investigated and rebuilt supply. It did not wait for a court to pronounce on every bottle. Disabled applicants deserve more than the bargain-bin version of that discipline.

Zero Harm Meets The HSE

On 8 February 2023, the Health and Safety Executive served Improvement Notice 313195969 on Britvic Soft Drinks Limited at its Roding Road site. The HSE found that Britvic had failed to assess employee noise exposure properly. Its assessment did not reliably estimate exposure, identify affected workers or specify the necessary controls.

Britvic complied by the April deadline. A regulator identified failure, the company corrected it, and the public register recorded both stages. Carlsberg’s supplier code promises the same sequence: evidence, audit and correction.

The Magic Mushroom Photograph

In July 2026, The Independent reported that the owners of the Magic Mushroom Cabin were suing Britvic over a photograph used to promote a J2O competition. Their lawyers sought around £6,500 in lost profits plus further damages.

Britvic admitted using the image but denied copyright infringement and liability. The dispute concerns ownership, permission and a large company’s use of somebody else’s material. Different subject, familiar corporate reflex.

The Quiet Mancunian Terrorism File

The Cepac terrorism link comes from The Quiet Mancunian.

The Quiet Mancunian published a pre-existing account connecting HSA Group, Cepac and alleged terrorism financing around 9/11. Its author wrote from Yemen and says he issued warnings before the attacks. The account then points to a £1 million payment from Cepac to J M Heaford Limited in early 2000. J M Heaford was the business run by the author’s parents, and the payment appears in the public company record.

That is the direct Cepac link. The Quiet Mancunian made the terrorism-financing allegation, identified the company, identified the payment and published the account years before TCAP existed. TCAP cited that source by name and linked readers to it.

The Employment Tribunal later collapsed the entire chain into the proposition that I had alleged Cepac was linked to funding 9/11. Paragraph 110 stripped away the original author, the pre-existing publication, the documented payment, the attribution and the distinction between reporting an allegation and inventing one. It then fed the flattened version into the conduct case used to destroy the discrimination claim.

Carlsberg Britvic now has a current supplier displaying Robinsons in its portfolio and a public file alleging that the same supplier made a seven-figure payment inside a terrorism-financing narrative. Procurement does not need a slogan here. It needs the accounts, the parties, the purpose of the payment and a written conclusion.

Questions For Carlsberg Britvic And Robinsons

Does Cepac currently supply Robinsons or another Carlsberg Britvic brand? If the portfolio work is historic, when did Cepac perform it and when did the relationship end?
Who reviewed the WhatsApp conversation, supporting witness statement and Cepac ET3? If nobody reviewed them, why did Carlsberg Britvic skip a supplier investigation?
How does Carlsberg Britvic reconcile paragraphs 12 and 14? Who received the health information that Cepac placed in its pleaded response?
Did Carlsberg Britvic audit Cepac’s recruitment controls and management of Page Outsourcing? Carlsberg’s code expressly covers recruitment agencies.
Which supplier code and contractual clauses govern Cepac? Identify the contract, its date and the compliance regime.
Has Carlsberg Britvic examined The Quiet Mancunian’s account and Cepac’s £1 million payment to J M Heaford Limited? State who conducted the review, what evidence they used and what they concluded about the purpose of the payment.
Will Carlsberg Britvic publish the evidence behind its decision? Dates, documents and conclusions will do. Squash slogans will not.

The Dilution Test

Robinsons tells shoppers to add water. Carlsberg Britvic should stop adding it to accountability.

The concentrated facts fit in one paragraph. Cepac put Robinsons in its 2026 portfolio. Page rang me, offered an interview, discussed pay, learned about my mental-health-related employment gap and promised a confirmation call that never came. The same-day WhatsApp record preserved the interview before the dispute existed. Cepac’s ET3 put a denial of disability knowledge beside health information from the recruitment chain. Newcastle then manufactured a conduct case from its own maladministration and my reaction to it, killed the discrimination claims without deciding that evidence and sent me a £20,000 bill.

Carlsberg’s own code covers suppliers and recruitment agencies. It bans disability discrimination, permits audits, demands correction and allows termination. The Quiet Mancunian file also gives Carlsberg Britvic a direct Cepac terrorism-financing allegation and a £1 million payment to examine.

Ask Page for its call notes and system history. Demand the source material behind paragraphs 12 and 14. Establish who saw the disclosure, why the confirmation call vanished and whether the Robinsons work remains current. Then examine The Quiet Mancunian’s account, the Cepac payment and the company records behind it.

If the evidence clears Cepac, publish it. When the evidence identifies failures, use the powers already written into the code. A supplier that refuses to cooperate has made the decision easier.

“Make the unboring choice” is a decent instruction. Let a famous brand prove that its ethics survive contact with a real complaint.

Everything else is concentrate theatre.

Lee Thompson – Founder, The Cummins Accountability Project

The Cepac Files : Robinsons, Cepac And The Disability Discrimination Concentrate