In addition to Shabot Langming and his entourage, more than 20 representatives of Chinese businessmen who have already entered the development of Akwa, including Xu Sheng, were also invited to attend the dinner.

After experiencing such a thing today, most people are still shocked, and Xie Sipeng has made up his mind to organize such a dinner, which can be regarded as a good character.

As a member of the Kanemoyo State Councilor and vice chairman of the Lunta City Council, Abacha and Shen Ji both have a relatively prominent position, and of course they were pulled by Xie Sipeng to accompany Shabo Trumin and the embassy officials, and Cao Mo would rather keep a low profile than spend the whole night thinking about how to speak official words.

Guo Hongliang, who bought a joint venture with his fellow villagers in 03 years and ran transportation between Xinhai and West Africa, was also invited to attend.

Although Yang Deshan and Xie Sipeng bought cement from China to Draculamo, looking for Guo Hongliang's ship to transport it, they were stopped by Kanem's cement import ban and could not go ashore in the Atlantic, and finally got the filling equipment from Cao Mo, so the ship was not scrapped, but today is the first time Cao Mo has seen Guo Hongliang.

Cao Mo pulled Xiao Jun and Zhou Han to sit with Guo Hongliang to learn about some things about West African shipping.

Guo Hongliang is forty-five or sixteen years old, he joined the army in his early years, and he can still see the capable military style, he is quite tall and strong, and his face is dark, so he has the nickname "crow".

After he retired from the army as a naval officer, he did not honestly accept the placement to work in the government department, but pulled up a group of people from the same village to buy a small cargo ship to run the transportation.

Guo Hongliang is also a talkative person, although he has only met Cao Mo for the first time, he is familiar with Yang Deshan and Xie Sipeng, and knows a little about Cao Mo, and he is also very enthusiastic to talk to him.

Guo Hongliang accumulated some net worth in his early years, but with the development of the domestic shipping industry, the living space of small cargo ships is getting narrower and narrower, and it happens that his comrades-in-arms in the military camp have been doing shipping on the West African route for several years, and they learned that the scale of China-Africa shipping is getting bigger and bigger, and the demand is also strong, so he raised funds and borrowed to buy an old ship of 30,000 tons, and docked to the name of Xinhai Shipping Group to run the West African route.

It is more than 20,000 kilometers long from Xinhai to the Gulf of Guinea, and the cost of sea freight is naturally quite expensive.

Dongsheng was determined to set up an aluminum profile processing plant in Longta, but Kanem's cheap labor cost was not the main factor, in fact, the profile occupied a huge amount of transportation space for bulk carriers, and the freight per ton was one or two times higher than that of a simple aluminum ingot.

The reason why Yang Deshan and Xie Sipeng wanted to transport cement from China to Kanem before was mainly because the price of cement in Kanem was terrifyingly high at that time, and there was a price difference of three or four times compared with China.

Even if the freight is a cut higher than the cost of cement purchased in China, it is still theoretically profitable, so they dare to do that vote, but they are almost completely folded in it.

Unlike Xie Sipeng, who is active, Guo Hongliang is more focused on running boats.

High value-added mechanical and electrical engineering equipment and other products have high freight costs, and although the long voyage will be very hard, the relative utilization rate of cargo ships is also high, and there can be a stable supply of goods.

Although the ship invested by Xie Sipeng and Xu Sheng is also under the name of Xinhai Shipping Group, it is actually Guo Hongliang's gang who helps operate and make some money from it

Fees.

For the iron ore trade, Guo Hongliang still thinks that Xie Sipeng has a gambling element in it.

But it's not that it can't be done, the main thing is that the ship invested by Xie Sipeng is too small, and there is no way to effectively reduce the cost.

Purely from the perspective of freight costs, Guo Hongliang feels that more than 150,000 tons of ore carriers need to run West Africa routes, and effectively reduce the freight cost of iron ore, which is a reliable business.

Now China mainly imports iron ore from Australia and Brazil, in addition to being much closer to each other, there is also a point that these two main ore and ore transportation routes, the mainstream has been more than 100,000 tons of ore ships.

In this case, no matter how high-quality and cheap the iron ore in West Africa is, the cost of shipping will be two or three times higher, and it will be difficult to withstand the large fluctuations in domestic iron ore prices in the future.

Another point is that the infrastructure construction in West Africa is lagging behind, and even if they can scrape together money to buy large ships, the iron ore terminal in the port of Pemei can barely berth 50,000-ton ore ships, which directly limits the space for them to upgrade their mining ships in the future.

With these insurmountable shortcomings, Guo Hongliang always felt that Xie Sipeng was a bit risky to bet his chips on the iron ore trade in Akwa.

Cao Mo grabbed Guo Hongliang at the dinner, and he also had his intentions.

Bulk cement is transported to the storage tanks of the terminal distribution point by special vehicles and ships, which has great advantages in cost control and cement quality compared with directly bagged cement leaving the factory.

At present, the Conero cement plant is also transporting bulk cement directly to the distribution points built in Draculamo and the two states of Ogun and Oyo through small and medium-sized special vessels.

The vast majority of countries, major cities and even capitals in West Africa are located along the Gulf of Guinea.

Although the overall economic development of West Africa is still lagging behind, countries are concentrating on the construction of one or two central coastal cities, and the scale of infrastructure construction is still considerable, and Cao Mo's next step is to expand the current production and sales model from Lunta-Draculamo to the entire coastal area of the Gulf of Guinea.

The third phase of the Conero cement plant has not been moved on the surface, but the construction of a 10,000-ton special berth that takes longer has been quietly doing preliminary construction, to put it bluntly, it is thinking that the third phase of the Conero cement plant is to export finished cement to the surrounding countries along the Gulf of Guinea.

The cost of shipping within one or two thousand kilometers is much cheaper than road transportation, and the journey is not long, which will not affect the quality of cement.

Before the cement import ban, three to four million tons of cement from India and southern Europe entered Kanem through the port of Draculamo every year, mainly large special ships running these routes.

These special vessels, which are often 50,000 tons or 100,000 tons, run short-distance shipping in the Gulf of Guinea, and the applicable terminal berths are few, and the loading and unloading costs of the secondary connection are too high to reflect the advantages of scale.

The most suitable for cement transportation in the Bay of Guinea is a bulk cement carrier of about 10,000 tons, but this cannot find a suitable fleet in Draculamo.

While Cao Mo started the construction of the third phase of the Conero Cement Plant, he also wanted to increase the capacity of offshore cement transportation.

Even he does not need to rush to build the third phase of the Conero cement plant for the time being, and can buy a suitable cement plant in any coastal port city in West Africa to expand the total cement production capacity, but it is also necessary to have a suitable dedicated fleet to build the production base

Connect with demand markets.

The building materials company is responsible for the formation of such a fleet, and the funds are naturally not worried, but the follow-up management is actually not simpler than the cement production itself.

However, considering his future industrial layout along the coast of Guinea, the fleet plays a crucial role in the circulation of personnel and materials, and Cao Mo does not want to completely entrust the relevant business to a third-party shipping company by paying a deposit.

With such a person as Guo Hongliang, Cao Mo thought about whether it was possible, he contributed funds, Guo Hongliang set up a management team, and the two sides jointly established a fleet dedicated to transportation in the Gulf of Guinea.

Hearing Cao Mo reveal this meaning, Guo Hongliang felt embarrassed, and told Cao Mo what the difficulty was.

They are now running West African shipping, although it is hard, but the crew can dock in the new sea every once in a while, and can reunite with their families for a period of time, if they form a fleet to run the route in the Gulf of Guinea, it will be difficult to hire suitable crew members from China.

Shabot Langming and the embassy officials left after the dinner, and Cao Mo and the others stayed in the hotel, seeing that it was still early, and everyone did not have the heart to play cards, so they went to the open-air bar by the beach to continue drinking.

Even if the economic and commercial counselor of the embassy was invited to attend the dinner today, but sitting in the open bar, Cao Mo could see that Xie Sipeng was still a little depressed, and after asking, he learned that even the embassy thought that the shipping cost of iron ore from Peimei Port, which was still a little lagging behind in port construction, was too high to withstand the large fluctuations in iron ore prices, and he had no intention of directly promoting this matter.

As a result, Shabot Langming is even less willing to help Xie Sipeng sign a long-term agreement.

It is also possible to sign, that is, the deposit cannot be reduced by half a cent, to ensure that after the price of iron ore fluctuates significantly, Xie Sipeng must continue to receive the ore mined by Mangba Iron Mine according to the agreement, otherwise he will have to bear all the liability for breach of contract.

"It doesn't matter if this thing can't be done, the situation in Akwa is really invisible, if you really have to make great efforts to promote this, then you can only fight this one!" Xie Sipeng comforted himself.

Although the Chinese businessmen who dared to go to Africa had psychological expectations for the chaos of local security, and some people had similar experiences with Cao Mo and Cao Mo when Draculamo was robbed at gunpoint, the robbers mainly robbed money, and as long as they handed over their belongings, they basically did not have to worry about their lives.

This time, before the bandits could get closer, they fired at the convoy with submachine guns, which was simply trying to take both wealth and life.

Originally, many people were worried about the investment in Akwa under the rule of the military government, so not to mention that they did not want to be involved in the iron ore trade, most people did not even want to visit the lucrative placer gold mining area, and they had already discussed at night how it would be safer to return to Kanem.

Anyway, I didn't dare to leave the land port when I came.

Although the police at the place where the incident occurred did not receive a report of the incident, in addition to the two bandits in the Waka military camp who were shot and killed by them at the intersection of the town, they should also hit or shoot and kill three or four bandits at the place where they encountered a roadblock - even if many people do not know the real inside story, they are afraid that when they return to Kanem, they will take this road again and will be targeted by this gang of bandits for revenge.

Thinking that Xing Chongchong organized this inspection trip, he didn't expect that he would end just after arriving at Akwa Peimei Port, and thinking that Akwa was brewing a great crisis, how could Xie Sipeng's mood improve?