Hundreds of tons of sugarcane from Qiongzhou were pulled from the port storage area into the industrial park in the western suburbs of Mingzhu City, and then hundreds of "Daming foreign employees" from the sugar factory swarmed up to send these sugar crops with fresh shoots and leaves into the processing workshop.

In order to support the sugar industry, which is the first source of profit in the Far East of Dongfang Industrial Company, Zhao Mingchuan and Liu Yaoyu carried out a large amount of sugarcane planting and promotion work in Qiongzhou and Dayuan, and carried out considerable agricultural technology guidance.

7 taels of silver per ton of sugarcane is the remuneration that Zhao Mingchuan gave to the Nanhai firm. One acre of sugarcane field, in Qiongzhou Island and Dayuan Island can harvest about 2 tons of sugarcane, a family contracted a dozen acres of sugarcane, a year after deducting various agricultural taxes have dozens of taels of silver income, for the Ming farmers who have been living by growing grain, this is a huge wealth that could not be imagined before. In 1634, together with the output of Dayuan, a total of about 70,000 tons of sugarcane was sent to the industrial area of Pearl Island, which not only supplied sufficient raw materials for the sugar industry of Pearl Island, but also supported a large number of shipowners along the coast of the Ming Dynasty.

More advanced sugar production equipment and technology than the same era, Pearl Island in 1634 to produce more than 8,000 tons of raw sugar, the average sugar yield of 12%, better than the European sugar extraction level in the same period. The wholesale price of $420 per ton of refined sugar is quite sought-after in the Far East, and merchant ships from India and Southeast Asia to England, Denmark, and the Netherlands have to buy a lot of them every time they make a round trip. Because at this time in the Indian, Japanese or European markets, even mixed jaggery is at least $800 per tonne. Even though the Far Eastern sugar export tax did not enjoy any preferential policy treatment, the Oriental Union still made a profit of $1 million on the Far Eastern sugar project in 1634.

“…… Hehe, general manager, thirty percent of the jaggery here will continue to be made into refined sugar, and India, Daming and Japan are in short supply! Qian Laosan, as the accompanying explainer of the business inspection, followed behind Isaac and introduced the hot sugar factory with eyebrows.

"Oh, yes. And here! Qian Laosan pointed to a factory building emitting water vapor not far away, and shook his head proudly, "The dregs after squeezing sugar will be made into spirits here." Hehe, the name is 'Pearl Burn', and we can export nearly 200,000 US dollars a year. In the end, some of the remaining things were made into feed for local livestock to eat, some were used as coarse fertilizer in the fields, some were dried for charcoal, and some small incomes were made. ”

"Hmm. Very good! Isaac seemed to have a very good appetite with this Qian Laosan, and was very satisfied with this business style of eating dry and squeezing, but when he was praising him, he saw a mountain of things similar to grain seeds piled up in an open-air warehouse in the distance, and suddenly a trace of doubt surfaced on his face, "Am I wrong?" Do we import so much food that we need to show off in the open air? ”

"You don't know, it's scrap from the ginner, it's all cottonseed." Qian Laosan hurriedly walked to Isaac's side and explained carefully. "Since the year before the fight, nearly 10,000 tons of cotton coarse material have been sent in from Qiongzhou, and thousands of tons of cottonseed will be left after the lint is removed. These things cannot be eaten or drunk, so they are piled up to see when they are buried or dumped in the sea. ”

After speaking. Qian Laosan also quietly turned his head to look at Zhao Mingchuan, who had been silent behind Isaac, and was a little nervous about what he said just now.

"Mr. Zhao!" Isaac blew his beard and glared, and looked back at Zhao Mingchuan, who did not change his face, with a distressed look. "I think anyone knows very well that local factories will process these cottonseeds into cotton oil! There are at least 6,000 tons of cottonseed here, are you going to fill in an island? ”

"Mr. Isaac. There is no power to detoxify cotton oil in China, so it cannot be eaten, and can only be used to make soap, lacquer, and lamp oil. It is inferior oil, if it is shipped to China thousands of miles away, won't it be a loss if the price is high? Zhao Mingchuan bowed his hand and didn't think that he had any negligence in his work.

As a cottonseed oil with high nutritional value in later generations, it had to face a series of high-cost troublesome processes such as gossypol removal and refining in the 17th century. It is only a simple means of hot frying and then pressing the oil, and there is no guarantee that the gossypol will be removed cleanly. Eating cottonseed oil containing gossypol can lead to male infertility, so even in Huamei, the crude oil extraction of cottonseed after imported cotton ginning is only used in the chemical industry, and it is a vegetable oil that is expressly forbidden to be eaten. Therefore, from the perspective of utilization, the use of coarse pressed cotton oil is far less extensive than that of other natural vegetable oils.

In the Pearl Island Overseas Territory, starting from this year, the only oil industry is to extract edible oil from coconuts, and it is expected that the profit of coconut oil exported to Daming merchants every year will not be less than 250,000 US dollars. Once the oleochemical project on Pearl Island is approved in China, the deep processing value of coconut oil will be higher, and the comprehensive utilization rate of coconut will be no worse than that of sugarcane.

"Toxic? No, it's just an overly cautious statement! No one can prove it adequately! Isaac raised his voice and pointed in the direction of the port, "There are countless markets nearby to sell, and we also have ready-made equipment to squeeze them, I can't tolerate this waste!" ”

As he was talking, Qian Laosan on the side hurriedly put a mysterious expression into Isaac's ear, and after a few mutterings, Isaac suddenly lost a lot of anger: "Of course, I understand very well that this oil should not be sold to the north...... However, we still have markets in India, Java, and Japan, and the barbarians in those places, it doesn't matter if you eat a little bit, right? ”

"Good, good! Then I'll take care of this, Mr. Isaac, please, let's go to see the textile factory next......" Qian Laosan saw that his immediate boss and the general manager were carrying it again, so he hurriedly played a round and brought the other party's attention to the other end by the way.

"Even the barbarian people of Nanyang are born and raised by their parents. Poisonous oil dealers, cutting off people's descendants, is worse than robbing and killing, such a loss of conscience, are you not afraid of retribution......" Zhao Mingchuan read silently, and at the end he already sighed.

For a whole day, Zhao Mingchuan and Qian Laosan took the general manager Isaac to inspect other core industries in the Pearl Island Industrial Zone in turn.

……

At a time when the business licenses of important industries are still difficult to bargain with the state and entangled, OUCC can only do its best to give full play to the industrial advantages at hand to support business development. So far, in addition to transit trade, OUCC Group's industrial projects on Pearl Island are still mainly agricultural and sideline products such as refined salt and sugar, food processing, textiles, oil extraction, or light industries.

In view of the abundant metal minerals in the Far East, the Oriental Union Corporation has waved the banner of "high environmental protection and lowest cost", and the corresponding metallurgical industry has not been directly carried out on Pearl Island, but has chosen another mode of operation.

Just when Isaac, the general manager of Oriental Industrial Company, was strolling around the industrial zone of Mingzhu City with a beer belly, he was on a small island that was nearly square dozens of nautical miles southwest of Mingzhu Island, which was called "Midai Island" by the locals in Nanyang. A couple of hard-sailed warships had just docked.

As an administrative subsidiary island of Pearl Island, Medei Island covers an area of more than 20 square kilometers and is covered with dense tropical primeval forest. There is a large lighthouse on the island of Medai, but apart from that, there are hardly any official inhabitants on the island. But since 1632, it has been an unknown "special workshop".

An open field in the tropical jungle covers an area of hundreds of acres, surrounded by a wooden fence several people high, and there is a guard tower at intervals of several tens of meters, on which stand several pirates with flintlock pistols or knives and arrows, and even a small stone fort near the gate. Several small cannons of the Furlong machine were eyeing the field.

In the simple sheds, piles of ore and coal can be seen everywhere, several large factories are burning with scorching fires, the smoke of metallurgical refining is constantly rising from the jungle, and a foul smell is emitted in the air.

An ingot, still hot in the middle of the field, was gradually stacked on top of the field, and shirtless laborers of all colors, under the supervision of the pirate's whip, struggled to move their blood-stained bodies, dazedly and nervously moving the ore raw materials or the metal ingots that had been baked.

And on the other side of the dense forest to the north of the metallurgical zone. In the strange fields of square ponds and trenches made of cement, filled with mud and covered with shelters from the rain, there is a group of laborers who cover their mouths and noses with strips of cloth at work. The "frosty" soil on the surface is carefully scraped off, and then sent to a nearby shed for boiling and refining, and then comes out of the other end of the shed. It's barrels of white crystals.

This is the nitrate field of the Medai Island Industrial Zone, which uses almost no cost of manure, plant ash, fish and shrimp and labor, and uses the nitrogen-making process of nitrifying bacteria to produce "artificial saltpeter" on a large scale, with an annual output of 3,000 tons.

Put it in Europe. Primordial nitrate was almost the only source of saltpeter in nitrate-deficient countries, and in England it was a royal monopoly that lasted for hundreds of years, while the Indian saltpeter trade of the English East India Company. It's even more profitable. It is said that a ton of Indian saltpeter can be resold in Europe for tens to hundreds of pounds, far more profitable than the Indian cotton and spice trade.

The amount of saltpeter needed for Huamei's industry and agriculture was almost astronomical, and in the early days of the founding of the country, it almost relied on the hundreds of tons that Spanish and Portuguese merchants bought and sold every year from the European continent or Morocco in North Africa. This situation continued until 1626, when the nitrate fields of the Butterfly Island Biological Nitrate Company began to be put into large-scale production, and now Butterfly Island produces tens of thousands of tons of artificial saltpeter every year, thus solving the problem of Huamei's once painful saltpeter imports.

The only side effect of the nitrate field is the stench, which is why Butterfly Island Bio-Nitrate Company was deeply disgusted by the mayor of Twin Ports, Zhang Mingcheng, and asked to stay away from the city and impose a huge local tax.

After weighing the domestic market, the Far East market and the production cost, OUCC Group decisively invested in the production of bio-nitrate production in Medai Island, because the climate and environment here are extremely good, and the production cost is almost zero under the operation of special labor. The demand for saltpeter in the Far East is not lower than that in Europe, and even if it is spread out into the long-distance freight by sea, it can be sold in the Atlantic Ocean and can be combined with the artificial saltpeter of Butterfly Island.

"Yaga! Didn't eat today?! "In the metallurgical area, a small Japanese overseer seemed to be in a very bad mood by the stench of the nitrate fields blowing from afar, and with a whip he smashed the back of an indigenous laborer, and then kicked over another native with an unsteady pace, and the expression on his face was extremely hideous.

The Southeast Asian natives who fell to the ground shouted anxiously for mercy, but unfortunately the Japanese ronin who served as the overseer did not understand it at all, and just whipped the prostrated laborers one after another.

"What for?! Who will do the work of pumping him to death? That's what Lao Tzu bought from Dutch Red Hair! ”

In the distance, Liu Xiang, dressed in exquisite silk and satin, with a gorgeous cigarette in his mouth, swaggered into the "Midai Island Industrial Zone" from the path surrounded by a large group of guards, and spat thick phlegm at the ruthless Japanese overseer.

"Hay! Lord Liu! When the Japanese overseer saw that the big boss was coming, he quickly threw away his whip, knelt on the ground, and almost buried his head in the soil. At the same time, he shouted loudly, "Thank you for your hard work, everyone is working hard!" ”

At this shout, the nearby Japanese ronin, who were in charge of supervising the work or presiding over the smelting work, all ran over and knelt down in front of Liu Xiang.

"Well, everyone has worked hard, and today I brought you good wine and meat. But in the future, Huamei is urging the goods tightly, but these labors are also very expensive, don't be too ruthless. In both days, the inventory was loaded onto the ship. Huamei is waiting to be picked up. Liu Xiang sat on a Taishi chair that suddenly appeared without knowing when, and looked around this industry proudly, and was quite satisfied with this month's output.

"Hay! Subordinates must do things well! The leading Japanese overseer made another exaggerated gesture of burying his head, which seemed extremely deferential.

"Hehe, big boss, I heard that there are big people in the Huamei group coming to Pearl Island, do you want to give us any benefits?" A little minion fox stood behind Liu Xiang with a fake tiger, smiling extremely stubbornly.

"Hmm...... is still from the Oriental Union Group, and this time there should be a chance to get a batch of guns from Huamei...... it's been rushing all day. Looks like we're going to have to find someone to do it......"

Looking at the smelting shacks around him, Liu Xiang decided where to go after the Lunar New Year to deceive a group of slave laborers and double the metal smelting output of Midai Island.

Liu Xiang, who has received behind-the-scenes support from the Chinese military and the Oriental Union Group, can now be said to be a figure in the Indochina Peninsula, the Malay Peninsula and the South Seas. Today, the "South China Sea Volunteers" have dozens of warships and thousands of people. Just collecting some escort protection fees in the sphere of influence, tens of thousands of taels of silver are received every year, not to mention the gorgeous seafood worth hundreds of thousands of taels of silver that are shared from Huamei every year.

Although Liu Xiang's wealth is far less than that of local warlords like Zheng Zhilong and Yan Sihai, he has also lived an extremely nourishing life over the years. Now Midai Island has been "contracted" by him again. In cooperation with the Oriental Union Group, such a slave workshop was set up, engaged in the smelting of copper, tin, iron and lead. and nitrate. Last year's metal production reached 1,200 tons of iron ingots, 240 tons of copper ingots, 300 tons of tin ingots and 800 tons of lead ingots. The ore raw materials are obtained from Dayuan, Luzon, Java and the Malay Peninsula, and coal is obtained from Liangguang or Dayuan, and the cost is extremely low.

In addition to copper and tin ingots, which are shipped to North America as strategic valuables and sold to local industrial companies in Huamei, most of the iron and lead are sold to Daming nearby, and Liu Xiang only recently received a $100,000 profit from Huamei.

In order to ensure output, Liu Xiang obtained many "criminals" from the magistrates of Annam, Siam, Chenla, India, and Luzon, and also purchased a large number of indigenous slaves from the Dayuan Yan family, Java in the Netherlands, and other places. Then, a group of Japanese ronin, who had not been able to return since the Japanese shogunate first announced the "Lockdown Order" in 1633, were brought under his command to form the supervision team of the "Midai Island Industrial Zone". Today, there are nearly 2,000 slave laborers working day and night on the island of Medai, and more than 100 Japanese ronin have become Liu Xiang's thugs or metallurgists.

Zhao Mingchuan had known that the group had such a project, and he had come to it himself, but he was still shocked by the extremely harsh environment and the large use of indigenous slave labor. However, Liu Xiang's explanation also left him speechless, after all, they are all "criminals" or "slaves".

The mortality rate of slave laborers in the industrial area of Medai Island is very alarming, not only Zhao Mingchuan can't see it, but in the end, Liu Xiang has to think about improving the living and working conditions here, after all, a considerable part of the indigenous labor is purchased from outsiders with real money.

That night, Liu Xiang got Japanese and Malay women from somewhere to become the excitement of Midai Island. Pirates and Japanese ronins all gathered around the armed stronghold to eat and drink, and all kinds of warblers sang and danced, and gurgled water. In the cargo hold of the fleet at their wharf, a total of more than 300 tons of artificial saltpeter, copper, tin, iron, and lead have been loaded onto the ship, waiting for tomorrow's departure to Pearl Island for delivery. (To be continued......)