1855 United States Tycoon

Chapter 425

The construction of the fortress of Johannesburg has now been launched across the board. Because the Boers and the British have temporarily reached a peace agreement, some not particularly sensitive materials can also be transported through the British-controlled ports and railways. For example, steel products and cement production equipment.

It is not that the Transvaal Republic cannot produce cement. In fact, as a country with mining as its mainstay, there is a lot of demand for cement, and it is not difficult to produce technology for this type of stuff, at least it is not difficult to produce a general level of cement. . And compared to importing cement from abroad, the cost advantage of local production is quite obvious. Therefore, the Boers also have their own cement plants. It’s just that the technology level of these cement plants is not high enough. The cement produced is good for general construction purposes, but the quality of their products is very problematic for military fortresses.

However, the fortress of Johannesburg is a considerable project. If all the cement needed is imported from abroad, considering that whether it is imported from Europe or the United States, it needs to travel through a long sea route, and then pass through the port and rail. Coming in, the transportation costs along the way are quite a lot. If all imported cement is used, the cost will be high. Therefore, in order to solve the cement problem, under Donald’s proposal, some Boers who had opened a small cement factory united and planned to build a brand new cement factory capable of producing high-quality cement. Of course, the related technology and equipment all come from MacDonald.

The technology personnel of the Macdonald Consortium found limestone of very good quality on a mountain within the farm of the Boer called Van Bitten, so the new cement plant was started here.

All the equipment in this cement plant comes from MacDonald, and even a plant was dismantled directly from United States. In the past few years, the scale of infrastructure construction in the United States has begun to shrink, and the production capacity of cement has been surplus. Therefore, Donald simply demolished a small cement plant under McDonald’s just recently annexed. , And sold it to the Boers.

For the Boers, this kind of business is also compatible. Brand-new equipment is of course good, but it must be a lot more expensive. Although these devices are not brand new, they have not been used for many years. Although they cannot be said to be 90% new, they are still 80% new. It is very cost-effective to buy a set of this equipment at 60% of the price of the new equipment. What’s more, the people of United States can also provide them with a full set of technology services-the technology personnel of the demolished cement factory are also sent here. They will stay here for a year. This is enough to ensure that this factory enters production at the fastest speed.

In fact, this new cement plant only used less than five after signing the contract, including dismantling the machinery in United States, transporting it over, re-installing and debugging, and producing the first batch of high-grade cement. Time of month.

Cement can be produced on-site, but steel is different. Kruger had also thought about whether he could buy a steel plant from the United States as a whole under the model of this cement plant. To be honest, only from the perspective of minerals, South Africa really has the basic conditions for large-scale steel smelting. South Africa’s coal reserves rank fifth in the world, and the quality is good. More than half of the coal mines are also easy to develop open-pit coal mines. South Africa’s iron ore resources are also the largest in Africa, accounting for more than 40% of Africa’s total iron ore reserves, and the grades of iron ore are also good. The iron ore in South Africa is mostly hematite, with high grade, low Impurities, good reducibility, and average thermal strength. The disadvantage of South African iron ore is that it contains higher alkali metals. Alkali metals (potassium, sodium) have harmful effects on the metallurgical properties of coke. But this is not impossible to solve. In short, if you only look at mineral resources, South Africa has a good foundation for developing a coal-iron composite industry. If there is a team that needs to farm in groups, in fact, apart from Hainan Island and Australia, if it is not too far away from the mainland of China, South Africa is really a good place.

However, it is not realistic to set up a large steel enterprise in the Transvaal Republic. First, a large-scale steel company requires a lot of investment, and second, the establishment of a large-scale steel company also takes a long time. Although the Boers have money, they now have a lot of money to spend, so the Boers can’t afford to buy the money for the next large steel plant at one time. Therefore, the Boers can only buy small and medium-sized steel plants.

If the Boers really make such a request, the Macdonald consortium must be very interested. Because this allows them to make a lot of money, although, unlike cement, the McDonald Consortium does not have ready-made suitable small and medium-sized steel plants. You know, steel companies have always won by scale. The larger the scale, the lower the cost. Unless it is to produce those “special steels” with high technical difficulty and high profits, of course, the market capacity is much smaller. And this kind of thing, whether MacDonald, or those steel companies in Europe, is impossible to transfer to them. So if the Boers want to buy this thing, they can only buy a medium-sized steel plant. (In fact, if you really sell a large one to them, you will probably lose money because of lack of management experience and technology talents.) So after McDonald Steel swept the steel market in the United States, in United States, it has almost There are no such so-called “small and medium-sized steel plants” anymore. But as long as you can make money, there is a solution to this problem.

However, if you really do this, MacDonald will make money, but the Boers may not be able to make money. So as soon as Kruger’s idea was put forward, it was opposed within the own government.

“Mr. President, this is totally impossible. First of all, the construction time of a steel plant is very long, and most of it cannot keep up with this project. And even if we really have an own steel plant, the quality of the steel produced may not be better than that of foreign ones. Well, the price is much more expensive than foreign ones. Unless we can increase tariffs on industrial products to an astonishing level, as the United States did back then, our steel will certainly not be competitive.” An official of, retorted like this.

This rebuttal silenced President Krueger. He knew that what the other party said was very reasonable. Unless other countries’ steel products can be expelled from the South African market by various means, the less entrant countries must want to develop. Steel, it will be very difficult. Under current conditions, it would be difficult for the Boers to confront the British without the restraint of foreign forces. If at this time, high tariffs are used to squeeze foreign industrial products out of the domestic market, it will definitely offend those European countries that are still on their side. By that time, it would be much simpler for the British to start a war. The United States can raise tariffs because the United States has proven through a series of wars that it is extremely costly and risky to force the United States to lower its head by force. That’s why it can do this, and if the Boers want to do it, it’s just dead.

In fact, without the power to defeat possible invaders militarily, it would be difficult to develop its own steel industry. For example, the Manchurian Qing Dynasty also built a series of iron and steel industries, including the so-called “Asia’s No. 1” Hanyang Iron Plant, but none of these iron and steel industries could really develop. The Hanyang Iron Plant has been built since the first day of construction. At a loss, until the end of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, there was no profit. Naturally, there was no decent Ascension of scale and technology. Although there are factors such as poor management in the Manchu and Qing dynasties, the main reason is that the customs of the Manchu and Qing dynasties are completely under the control of foreigners, so that there is no way to provide protection for the country’s steel products. Enterprises have to face the competition of foreign products without protection. The price of steel products is closely related to the cost of raw materials, transportation costs, and the technology and scale of the steel plant itself. The Western colonial powers control the world’s lowest mining cost and highest grade iron ore, and control the world’s largest merchant fleet. The steel plant itself is also the world’s largest and most technologically advanced. In the end, it was reflected in the product. After the western steel products were sent to China, the price was even lower than the cost price of the Hanyang Iron Works. The quality level of Western steel products is significantly higher than that of Hanyang Iron Works. Under such circumstances, it is strange that my Qing’s steel industry can develop. By the same token, it is not surprising that steel production declined year after year during Chang Kaishen’s golden decade.

Without own steel, there would be no powerful army, but without a powerful army, there would be no independent steel. In the age of industrialization, this is really a strange circle.

Since there is currently no power to raise tariffs and protect domestic industries, the establishment of own steel can only be postponed.

“Maybe after the fortress is completed, when our army is ready, and when we have the ability to protect our own, then we can consider it.” President Kruger thought.

Since the idea of ​​self-made has been cut off, of course it can only be completely outsourced, so McDonald Steel got a new deal. The British are of course very dissatisfied with the actions of the United States, but at present McDonald’s sales in the UK are not much. Since the expiration of the patents of sulfonamides and heroin, the Macdonald consortium has gradually had business dealings with the British. The decrease. Of course, this reduction does not mean the amount, but the decline in the share. Coupled with the influence of United States itself, so at least for the time being, it seems that the British really don’t have much to do with Scrooge’s business.