A few minutes later, the motorcade left the fence of the ammunition factory and headed south along Binjiang Avenue to the Xin'an River Dam, where there was a row of wooden stilt houses, one of the first two naturalization camps to be built, and now all the naturalization camps in the western part of Xin'an City have been relocated to the east bank of the Xin'an River, where there are large estates of farmland and numerous construction projects.

Now, the converted naturalization camp is part of the sugar factory.

The heart of the sugar mill, a sugar press powered by Stirling's bio-heavy oil pulverized coal, is installed in a greenhouse made of logs next to it.

Outside the greenhouse is the open space of the wharf on the west bank of the Xin'an River, echoing with the same wharf in the distance, unlike in the past, these two original wooden wharves have been turned into cement wharves, Wei Hong said, small Galen sailing ships can directly dock here.

Because of the closure of the earth dam, there is no need for the wharf for people to travel on both sides of the river, but it is still needed for the transportation of various bulk materials from both banks, estuaries and seas - in this era when there are no efficient land transportation, water transportation is the only low-cost way to transport bulk materials.

Therefore, the flat land near the wharf is also hardened with cement and turned into a material stacking yard.

The earthen dam connects the banks of the Xin'an River, and in the distance is a newly built double row of wooden walls, a barrier against external attacks.

Immediately outside the wooden wall is a large area of farmland, where the plantation of Duchess Margaret was located, and it is now the sugar cane harvest season, and the dense sugar cane forest stretches as far as the eye can see, and there are wooden guard towers and wooden fences and other buildings on the edge of the sugar cane forest, and it is clear that the wooden wall is not the only defensive barrier in the eastern district of Sinanseong.

At this time, there are all kinds of ships docked on the wharf, the big one has a dhow Caravel sailboat, the small one is just a leaf bamboo row, which is full of bundles of sugar cane without exception, at present, the wharf does not have semi-mechanized unloading equipment such as manual pulley tower cranes, some are just people and trolleys, at this time, an endless stream of carts come and go, bundles of sugar cane are placed on the ground of the square, from the wharf to the greenhouse of the sugar factory.

This scene made Dr. Quan very excited, looking at this posture, it was obvious that the sugarcane was harvested.

What is the sugar yield?

Dr. Quan asked a key question.

Wei Hong replied:

"The current situation is less than seven percent, this is still a new species, the variety has not degraded, now there are more than 3,000 acres of sugarcane land, the average yield of sugarcane per mu is a little more than two tons, so almost an acre of sugarcane can only produce 100 to 15 kilograms of sugar, our sugarcane purchase price is 12 taels of silver a ton, planing our production costs, a load of sugar has a little more than 20 taels of net profit."

"That's not that high......"

Dr. Quan commented.

"Of course, if only in terms of profit margin, it is definitely not as good as our own planting, after all, the varieties are different, Uncle Wang said that he plans to transplant the varieties at home, for this batch of sugarcane, about half of it will be used as the base material for the old captain's blending wine, Uncle Wang said that the profit margin of making wine is much higher than that of sugar."

"In this way, the sugarcane varieties grown at our home are indeed different."

Zhou Rui interjected.

"Because this is fruit cane, fruit cane and sugar cane have not been distinguished in this era."

"So you want to take the sugar cane varieties from home and plant them?"

"Sooner or later, but Uncle Wang can't take care of it now, what he is thinking about now is how to expand the winery, and he also wants to find a piece of land to grow tobacco leaves......"

At this time, Dr. Quan asked Wei Hong:

"When the sugar factory was built here, it was said that the duchess had a plan to plant 10,000 acres of sugarcane, how is it going now?"

Wei Hong replied:

"Doctor Quan, now we have a bigger goal, what you just said is the old yellow calendar, 10,000 acres of sugarcane will definitely be realized, but not now, now the Duchess's plantation is very large, there are many varieties, you see the ...... over there"

Wei Hongyao pointed to the other side of the Xin'an River and said, from the outside of the wall of Xin'an River City by the sea, to the east to the wall of Dili City, about nine square kilometers of wasteland has been basically bought by the Duchess......

"Whole sugar cane?"

"At the beginning, this was the plan, and there will be interplanting in the future, but other crops will also be added, which is the planting plan arranged by Uncle Wang.

As for sugarcane, of course, it is the main crop, after all, the water and soil conditions here can allow sugarcane to be harvested three times in two years, so from the first half of next year, our sugar factory here will have a small half a year in a state of operation, Uncle Wang roughly estimated, about 8,000 to 10,000 acres of sugarcane land, not less than 20,000 tons of sugarcane processing capacity, in addition to half for winemaking, the other half will be used for sugar extraction, so the sugar factory must improve its processing capacity at that time.

Therefore, we also have to ask Dr. Quan to go back and help us urge Boss Luo to at least make another copy of the boiler and condensation tower for sugar refining.

No less than 20,000 tons of sugarcane, at least 1,500 tons of sugar, and the net profit is almost a million taels of silver, which is still the price sold to the Diao Company on the ground...... If you add in the old captain and the duchess's blending of wine, how much benefit do you think this is? ”

"There will be five-spice powder and chocolate in the future!"

"Don't forget the tobacco!"

Zhou Rui and Yue Chu were also a little excited when they heard it.

Wei Hong went on to say that for Xin'an City, technology and management personnel are now a bottleneck, although they can barely cope with it at present, but with the expansion of various business scales, including our garrison, there is a great need for students who support Zhuyuan and Sunflower at home.

Doctor Quan nodded silently when he heard this.

Wei Hong continued:

"As for the technical management personnel, the ammunition factory and the ammunition factory are not the same, and now the main people working in the sugar factory are the trade laborers in the naturalization camp, as for the technical and management personnel, there are the old people brought by Brother Hou and Xiao Guizi before, and a group of technicians were trained before leaving, including two Japanese, two Han and one Annamite, these people are all volunteers who were recruited by Pimont in Macau, and later followed Brother Hou, these people have one thing in common - they know some Chinese characters more or less, and they can communicate in Chinese.

As for the technical personnel of the ammunition factory, it is completely dependent on our own training, a year ago the ammunition factory equipment installation project began, Brother Hou and Gui Xianning taught them hand in hand, and also gathered these people together to strengthen the training for a while before taking up their posts, for now, it can only be said that they can be used, but they are completely unable to reach the level of being a technician alone, the reason is that there is no culture, if you come to a few bamboo garden or sunflower students, this situation will be greatly improved. ”

Hearing this, Dr. Quan responded with some hesitation:

"Zhuyuan and Sunflower, let's discuss it again, I just got off the boat and heard Hou Xianglin say that now you also have a shortage of labor here, so you can solve the labor problem here first."

Wei Hong had no choice but to nod and say:

"What Brother Hou said is the truth, mainly because the construction of the Xin'an River Dam is too labor-intensive, so the labor force in Xin'an City is becoming more and more tight.

In addition, the labor force there is actually very limited, and now it is the limit to reach 3,000 acres of planting area, and in recent times, half of the labor force in the naturalization camp has been leased to the duchess, and I also heard Uncle Wang say that the first phase of spices planted by the duchess next year will be 2,000 acres, and then the planting area will be doubled, which does not include the area of tobacco planting, so it is difficult for the duchess to find a naturalization camp to ask for labor, so listen to Brother Xiao, Recently, the company has been importing black slaves on a large scale. ”