The construction of the Johannesburg fortress is now fully underway, and since the Boers and the British have reached a temporary peace agreement, some non-sensitive goods can be transported through the British-controlled port and railroad in Guò. For example, steel products and cement production equipment.

It's not that the Transvaal Republic can't produce cement, in fact, as a country with mining as its backbone, the demand for cement is quite large, and the production technology of such things is not difficult, at least it is not difficult to produce cement at a general level. Moreover, compared with the import of cement from abroad, the cost advantage of local production is also quite obvious. So, the Boers also had their own cement plant. It's just that the technical level of these cement factories is not high enough, and the cement produced is good for general construction purposes, but for military forts, the quality of their products is very problematic.

However, the Johannesburg fortress is a considerable project, and if all the cement needed is imported from abroad, considering that whether it is imported from Europe or the United States, it will have to go through a long sea route, and then it will be transported to the port of Guò and the railway, and the transportation costs along the way will be very high. If all of them were imported cement, the cost would be high. So, in order to solve the cement problem, under Donald's suggestion, some Boers who had started small cement factories banded together and planned to build a brand new cement plant that could produce high-quality cement on their own. Of course, the technology, as well as the equipment, came from MacDonald.

Technicians from the MacDonald consortium found very good quality limestone on a hill within the confines of a Boer farm called Van Bitten, and the new cement plant was started here.

All the equipment of this cement plant came from MacDonald, and even a factory was simply dismantled from the United States. In recent years, the scale of infrastructure construction in the United States has begun to shrink a little, and the cement production capacity has a tendency to be excessive, so Donald simply dismantled a small cement factory that MacDonald had just annexed and sold it to the Boers.

This kind of trade was also compatible with the Boers. Brand new equipment is good, but it's also a lot more expensive. Although these devices are not brand new today, they have not been used for many years, although they cannot be said to be ninety percent new, but eighty percent of them are still new. It's very cost-effective to buy a set of this thing at 60 percent of the price of new equipment. What's more, the Americans were able to provide them with a full range of technical services - the technicians from the dismantled cement plant were also sent here. They will stay here for a year. This is enough to ensure that the plant can enter production as quickly as possible.

In fact, it took less than five months for the new cement plant to go from signing the contract, including the dismantling machine in the United States, transporting it, reinstalling and commissioning it, and producing the first batch of high-grade cement.

Cement can be produced locally, but steel is different. Kruger also thought about whether it would be possible to buy a steel plant from the United States as a whole in the model of this cement plant. To be honest, just from the mineral aspect, South Africa really has the basic conditions for large-scale steelmaking. South Africa has the fifth-largest coal reserves in the world, and the quality is good. More than half of the coal mines are also open pit coal mines. South Africa's iron ore resources are also the first in Africa, accounting for more than 40% of Africa's total iron ore reserves, and the grade of iron ore is also good. Most of the iron ore in South Africa belongs to hematite, with high grade, less impurities, good reduction and average thermal strength. The disadvantage of South African iron ore is that it contains high alkali metals. Alkali metals (potassium, sodium) have a detrimental effect on the metallurgical properties of coke. But it's not like there's no way around it. In short, if we only look at mineral resources, the foundation for the development of the coal-iron composite industry in South Africa is actually quite good. If there is a team that needs to farm in groups, in fact, in addition to Hainan Island and Australia, if it is not too far from Chinese mainland, South Africa is really a good place.

However, it is not realistic to start a large steel enterprise in the Transvaal at present. First, large-scale iron and steel enterprises need a lot of investment, and second, it takes a long time for a large-scale steel enterprise to be built. Although the Boers had money, they now had a lot to spend, so the Boers could not afford to buy the next big steel mill at once. Thus the Boers can only ask for . Purchase of small and medium-sized steel plants.

If the Boers did make such a request, the MacDonald consortium would certainly be very interested. Because it would make them a lot of money, although, unlike cement, the MacDonald consortium did not have a suitable small or medium-sized steel mill in its hands. You know, iron and steel enterprises have always been a thing that wins by scale, and the larger the scale, the lower the cost. Unless it is to produce those "special steels" that are technically difficult, very profitable, and of course have a much smaller market capacity. And this kind of thing, whether it is MacDonald, or those steel companies in Europe, it is impossible to transfer it to them. So if the Boers were to buy it, they had to buy a medium-sized steel mill. (In fact, if you really sell a large one to them, most of them will lose money due to lack of management experience and technical personnel) So after McDonald Steel swept the US steel market, the so-called "small and medium-sized steel mills" such as zài are almost no longer in the United States. But as long as you can make money, there is a way to solve this problem.

It's just that, if he did, MacDonald would have made money, but the Boers might not. So as soon as Kruger's idea was proposed, it was opposed within his own government.

"Mr. President, this is completely impossible. First of all, the construction time of a steel plant is very long, and most of them cannot catch up with this project. And even if we really have our own steel mill, the quality of the steel produced is not necessarily better than that of foreign countries, but the price is much more expensive than that of foreign countries. Unless we can raise tariffs on industrial goods to an alarming level, as the United States did back then, our steel will certainly not be competitive. An official from the Ministry of Finance retorted.

This rebuttal silenced President Kruger, who knew that what he said was very reasonable, and that unless steel from other countries could be expelled from the South African market by various means, it would be very difficult for backward countries to develop steel. And in the present conditions, without the containment of foreign powers, it would be difficult for the Boers to fight against the British. If, at this time, some kind of high tariffs are carried out to squeeze foreign industrial products out of the domestic market, it will certainly offend those European countries that are still on their side. By that time, it would have been much simpler for the British to start a war. The Americans were able to raise tariffs because the Americans had already proven themselves through a series of wars, and it was extremely costly and risky to force the United States to bow its head by force. That's why it can do that, and for the Boers to do it, it's a dead end.

In fact, without the strength to defeat a possible invader militarily, it is simply difficult to develop one's own steel industry. For example, the Manchu Qing Dynasty also built a series of iron and steel industries, including the so-called "Asia's first" Hanyang Iron Works, but these steel industries have not really developed, and the Hanyang Iron Works has been losing money since the first day of construction, and there has been no profit until the fall of the Manchu Dynasty. Of course, there are factors such as the poor management of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, but the main reason is that the Manchu customs are completely under the control of foreigners, so that there is no way to provide protection for domestic steel products, so that the new domestic iron and steel 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-cost, highest-grade iron ore, the world's largest merchant fleet, and the steel mills themselves are the world's largest and most technologically advanced. In the end, it was reflected in the products, and there was a phenomenon that after the Western steel products were sent to our Qing Dynasty on freight, the price was even lower than the cost price of the Hanyang Iron Works. And the quality level of steel products in the West is significantly higher than that of Hanyang Iron Works. Under such circumstances, it is strange that the steel industry in the Qing Dynasty can develop. By the same token, it is not surprising that steel production has declined every year during Chang Kaishen's golden decade.

Without its own steel, there would be no strong army, but without a strong army, it would be impossible to have its own independent steel. In the age of industrialization, this is a real strange circle.

Since it does not yet have the power to raise tariffs and protect its own industry, the establishment of its own steel will have to be postponed.

"Maybe we can't think about it until the fortress is completed, when our army is ready, when we have the ability to protect ourselves." President Kruger thought so.

Since the idea of self-control has been broken, of course, it can only be purchased completely, so MacDonald Steel has a new deal. The British, of course, were very unhappy with what the Americans were doing, but at the moment MacDonald did not buy much in the UK, since the sulponamides and the sea. Lo. After the expiration of the patent, the MacDonald's business dealings with the British gradually decreased. Of course, this reduction does not mean the amount, but the share has decreased. Coupled with the influence of the United States itself, at least temporarily, the British really don't seem to have much to do with Scrooge's business.