When Sanjeev and Arani Kumar Soosaipillai started Prax Group in 1999, the entire operation ran out of a serviced office in Weybridge, Surrey, with four desks and two people. Twenty-five years on, Prax Group records annual revenues of $10 billion, employs approximately 1,450 staff across multiple continents, and operates at every level of the oil value chain, from crude sourcing to refinery production to forecourt retail. Technology has been embedded in the company’s expansion at each stage, though its application has tended toward the practical and incremental rather than the headline-grabbing.
Pricing Arbitrage and Early Data Literacy
Prax Group’s earliest commercial model relied on the founders’ ability to read and exploit differences in how fuel was priced across the supply chain. Suppliers and customers each operated on varying pricing structures: month-average, week-average or spot pricing, with lagging or leading price references. The company generated margin by carefully pairing suppliers and customers according to how market prices were moving, and by introducing some price risk management through derivative instruments via a hedging account.
This was not, in itself, a technology play. But it demanded an aptitude for data, pricing formulae, market tracking, risk modelling, that would later inform how the business adopted more formal digital systems. Sanjeev’s educational background, a BA (Hons) in Accounting and Finance with Computing from the University of Kent, combined financial and technical training in a way that was relatively uncommon for oil trading entrepreneurs in the late 1990s.
Commodity Trading and Risk Management Software
A business that trades crude oil, refined products, and biofuels across global markets cannot function without purpose-built software for tracking positions, managing counterparty risk, and reporting exposures in real time. Prax adopted Aspect, a commodity trading and risk management (CTRM) platform, and SAP for financial accounting and reporting.
CTRM software is a mainstay of oil trading firms, but its deployment is routinely complex and expensive. That Prax managed to configure Aspect and onboard counterparties in-house, rather than through a lengthy consulting engagement, reflects the company’s preference for lean implementation, consistent with its history of tightly managing working capital.
Digital Routing and Logistics
Prax Group launched Axis Logistics in January 2020, placing its own fleet of fuel tankers on the road. The logistics arm grew and operated across five UK locations, running as a 24/7 operation. Sanjeev has stated that the company “built a proprietary logistics fleet and optimised distribution via digital routing systems and the development of strategic hubs”.
Digital route optimisation is a well-established tool in fuel distribution. The marginal gains, shorter journeys, lower fuel costs, better driver utilisation, compound quickly when a fleet covers the geography that Prax does, supplying product from terminals across the UK.
The Head of Axis Logistics described a turnaround process rooted in matching resources to demand: redeploying drivers to the correct locations, building commercial volume forecasts, and confronting legacy problems honestly. Customer service levels reached 97% following these changes.
Telematics, Data Analytics and Fuel Cards
Alongside its logistics fleet, Prax integrated telematics and data analytics to deliver what it described as “customer value-added services”. The company introduced a national fleet fuel card system, accepted across partner networks, that generated transaction-level data on refuelling patterns, volumes and locations.
The Harvest Energy fuel card operation underwent a physical relocation from Jarrow to Weybridge in 2024, as part of a broader consolidation programme known as Project King. Working alongside the Axis Logistics Credit Manager, the Head of Spot Sales and Fuel Cards, overhauled processes, suppliers, mailbox handling and card dispatch procedures. He described the shift in terms of moving from analogue to digital ways of working: “They were very analogue, for want of a better term. But there will always be things that will change, and there will always be things we can improve. What we now have works, but we can still work to make it better.”
Terminal Management and Pipeline Infrastructure
The acquisition of Lindsey Oil Refinery brought Prax a suite of physical infrastructure with embedded technology requirements. The refinery’s 215-kilometre Finaline pipeline, running south to Buncefield and onward to Heathrow Airport, enabled multi-product distribution to the Greater London area and to aviation customers. The refinery also operated one of the most advanced rail loading systems in the country.
When Sanjeev led the international acquisition of a 36.36% stake in Natref, South Africa’s only inland crude oil refinery, in late 2024, the Southern Africa Terminal Operations team began examining a Terminal Management System (TMS), a centralised portal designed to automate terminal activities, provide real-time operational data, ensure regulatory compliance and close out movements logged in the existing Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) system. The team’s daily throughput averages approximately five million litres through combined road and pipeline dispatches.
Mobile Payments and Retail Digitalisation
Prax Group’s German retail arm, OIL! Tankstellen, adopted mobile point-of-sale payment across its forecourt network under the Soosaipillais’ ownership. Customers could use apps from providers including ryd pay, paying via credit card, Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal or Sparkassen girocard. The process worked through GPS identification of the service station, with the customer selecting a pump number in the app, fuelling, and confirming payment — all without entering the shop.
The business development manager of OIL! Tankstellen, who has over 30 years’ experience in fuel retail, framed the move in terms of customer acquisition: mobile payment attracts “fast drivers” and in-car payment users who might otherwise bypass a station that requires them to queue inside. OIL! is frequently the cheapest provider alongside the major brands on the ryd pay app, which generates additional transactions. Future plans include extending in-app services to car washes and promotional shop offers.
Learning Management and HR systems
In 2025, Prax launched PraxAcademy, a Learning Management System (LMS) accessible through the company’s internal platforms, MyPrax, MyHarvest and MyAxis, covering mandatory e-learning, professional development and a learning prospectus. The system was developed as part of Arani Soosaipillai’s HR function, which oversaw employee recruitment, training and development across the group’s international workforce.
The company had already deployed a safety media system across its Jarrow Terminal and fuel cards business, delivering online training modules covering areas such as display screen equipment assessment and manual handling. A new permit-to-work system was introduced at the terminals, with operators progressing through training to become authorised permit issuers.
Corporate Transformation and Systems Integration
Prax Group’s growth by acquisition, Lindsey Oil Refinery, OIL! Tankstellen, Natref, and a succession of retail sites and terminals, demanded successive rounds of systems integration.
The company’s future approach to technology was set out in a 20th anniversary message that stated that the business had to adopt new technologies to identify consumer trends in order to market and distribute products more efficiently, whilst ensuring product quality was world-class.
The statement went on to acknowledge the organisational difficulty inherent in growth and how the transition from a smaller family-owned business to a larger corporate organisation can take some getting used to.
Fostering Growth by Adapting to Technology
Prax Group’s use of technology under the Soosaipillais did not follow the mould of a Silicon Valley disruptor. It was the application of established tools (CTRM platforms, SAP, telematics, digital routing, LMS platforms, mobile payments) to a physical, capital-intensive industry where margins are often thin and execution matters more than novelty. The company’s approach was to adopt technology when it solved a concrete problem: managing price risk across multiple supplier and customer formulae, keeping oil tankers on optimised routes, or enabling app-based payment to capture customers who would otherwise drive past.
What distinguishes the Soosaipillais’ full-integration strategy is not the technology itself but the pace and breadth of the business it was applied to. A company that began with a £15,000 bank loan grew to an international business with refining operations on two continents, a 200-plus retail network, and trading desks handling global commodities. The digital systems underpinning those operations were not bolted on as afterthoughts; they were adopted iteratively, each layer of technology enabling the next phase of growth. That pattern was a consistent thread from the pricing spreadsheets of the early 2000s to the Terminal Management Systems under evaluation in Sasolburg.
