Arthur Ravo, Director at Synergy Commodity

Arthur Ravo has devoted his career to mastering fuel procurement at the highest level. After the acquisition of his father’s industrial gas business by Paraco Gas in 1989, he spent 32 years there, the final 25 of which were devoted to leading their procurement and supply team. He’s now brought his decades of experience to independent and regional fuel marketers in his role as director with Synergy Commodity.

“His expertise in supply strategy, pricing, logistics and relationship management has helped small and mid-size family-owned companies operate with greater confidence in increasingly volatile markets,” his nomination said. “Art stands apart in his ability to create solutions that work for all parties involved — suppliers, retailers and customers alike. Widely respected across the supply chain, he is known not only for his technical expertise, but for his integrity, collaboration and commitment to strengthening the industry. His career has been defined by reliability, fairness and results.”

What are some ideas and solutions Arthur has implemented to improve the efficiency of Synergy Commodity? “We started out standardizing customer files to ensure everyone in the organization would understand what we were doing,” Ravo said. “We are now automating administrative work and non-added value processes that will allow us to scale up our ability to help more customers … and give us the needed redundancy we require as we grow.”

Arthur believes this will also allow them to spend more time with each client helping them in areas where they have expertise.

“In my previous role, I was tasked with creating an invoice workflow,” Arthur said. “After an initial failure, we found the right fit and were very successful. We were able to add 30% more work to the accounts payable group without adding any additional personnel.” He added they were able to create transparency to their procurement process that they never had prior. “This led to a reduction in nonessential purchases.”

Arthur believes innovation is important in managing supply lines across a large network. “Ensuring supply security requires real-time flexibility and a need to plan for multiple contingencies, sometimes months in advance,” he said. “As suppliers and terminal asset ownership changes, it becomes essential to continually reassess customer supply plans year-round, not just at contract signing time.

“Some years bring bigger and [more] new challenges than others,” Arthur continued. “This past winter in the Northeast/mid-Atlantic, we experienced one of the coldest winters we’ve had in a while. Additionally, there were multiple terminal outages, the pipeline went on severe daily allocation and terminals that usually allowed for nonratable liftings were insisting on daily schedules. All this stretched supply lines to the breaking point.”

Arthur was able to preemptively find new sources of supply, along with additional trucking help to mitigate local supply shortages, allowing them to keep customers fully supplied. Through nimble work during difficult challenges, Arthur demonstrates how innovative thinking and proactive planning can improve the lives of propane customers.