The home heating oil industry has a long and proud history, and Fuel Oil News has been there supporting it since 1935. It is an industry that has faced many challenges during that time. In its 77th year, Fuel Oil News is doing more than just holding
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A R E E WR A P -U P committed to being the premiere HVAC provider in the industry." They also show- cased their Spirit Furnace, a line of oil-fired warm air furnaces for wholesale distribu- tion to the Northeast market. Another new product introduced at the Fuel Oil News New Vendor Award 2011 winner K&K Management Solutions came back to the show this year. Here director of operations Matthew Jones, on the right, is pictured with the award and Fuel Oil News Midwest sales manager Rich Alden, on the left. 21st center," he said. "We're proud that AREE was the first indus- try trade show and convention officially combining traditional fuels with the renewable biodiesel found in Bioheat." AREE wasn't the only entity to change its name this year. The company formerly known as Info-Sys Solutions was at the show exhibiting as Abilis Energy. Vice president and general manager Chris Turcotte said the information management and solutions company decided to change its name this past February for a vari- ety of reasons, including to avoid customers' confusion caused by another company in a different industry with the same name. "We wanted to disassociate with that company and associate ourselves more with our parent company," which is also named Abilis, said Turcotte. The name change also gives the Montreal, Quebec-based company a fresh platform to introduce new business services beyond back office products. To learn more, visit www.abilisenergy.com. Despite the changes in focus and names, there seemed to be a smaller amount of new products being introduced at the show this year. However, Thermo Products showcased their 86 percent efficient newly revised oil mobile home furnace and their 95 percent high efficiency gas mobile home furnaces at AREE 2012. Mark Santangelo, Thermo Products director of sales and marketing, said, "Thermo Products is Energy Kinetics announced its top producer for the entire company in 2011, Jay McCay, of Inergy. He is pictured here, on the left, with Energy Kinetics territory manager Brian Kiernan, on the right. www.fueloilnews.com | FUEL OIL NEWS | JUNE 2012 17 show was Blue Cow Software's Ignite Mobile Service. The company says it is a wireless solution that empowers your service tech- nicians and salesman by automating your service department with real time paperless communication. This allows technicians to invoice customers and salesmen to print or e-mail estimates and proposals before leav- ing the customer's home. The National Oilheat Research Alliance had its board meeting during the show. The organization went over its current state of affairs, which are much smaller in scope since NORA has not been funded by the federal government for two years. The program has continued to operate solely on state and private contributions, but is committed to keeping their research and development projects active. NORA president John Huber outlined some of the reasons why the lack of funding has gone on so long, which includes the fact that this current Congress has been very slow to pass any- thing. Huber also went over some of the coming opportunities to get the money reinstated, such as being included in a small business jobs bill, as well as some of the obstacles, such as this being a presidential election year. l FON