Chapter 82 Flour Mill
June.
Port of Bagamoyo, on the banks of the Little Rhine.
Bagamoyo is the fourth port of East African colonies after Dar es Salaam, Mombasa and Tanga, and it is also the focus of East African colonial development.
A factory building covering an area of more than 1,000 square meters was built in Bagamoyo Port. It is entirely made of masonry and concrete structures. The red walls and the surrounding white Arabic buildings appear to be Out of place.
Its style completely copies the current European architectural style, which is in sharp contrast with the surrounding short Arab houses. Even the local Arab church in Bagamoyo looks a bit small in front of it.
Tall chimneys protruded from the ceiling in the middle of the factory building. The billowing black smoke lit up the blue sky of East Africa, and the smell of industry hit our faces in East Africa.
The Sultanate of Zanzibar also has some small-scale handicraft industries in East Africa, all of which are traditional small workshops, such as blacksmith shops, tailor shops... these traditional handicraft industries.
The Bagamoyo Flour Mill is the second recorded modern industry in East Africa to adopt large machine production.
The first time was the Tanga Sisal Processing Factory, which has been in business for a long time and is currently doing very well in the market.
However, sisal is East Africa’s dominant industry, and only Brazil and parts of Southeast Asia can compete with it.
Flour mills are a relatively common industrial industry today, especially in Europe and the United States. There are countless such factories, of course including those small ones that may only have one or two machines.
The Bagamoyo Flour Mill uses steam power, that is, a boiler. The source of its boiler power is coal developed from the interior of East Africa, which drives the steam turbine to provide uninterrupted power to the equipment in the factory. Stable power.
The machinery and equipment in the factory are all the latest models imported from the German region. They are shipped as spare parts at German ports on the Baltic Sea and are finally unloaded at Bagamoyo Port.
After the guidance of professional and technical personnel, dozens of machines have been installed. These machines are big and all made of metal parts.
The entire workshop is simple and elegant, making it convenient for cleaning and disinfection.
The lighting system all adopts the Berlin Electric Power Company's own technology, which can maintain continuous operation even at night, and the generator is an imported Siemens product.
Closely connected to the production workshop is a huge modern warehouse. The climate in the coastal areas of East Africa is relatively humid, which is not conducive to the preservation of food, so the storage requirements for food are higher.
So the construction of the warehouse fully adopts the best technology and planning of the current era.
In order to prevent moisture and rats, the ground is completely poured from a concrete structure. The drainage system is designed by professionals, fully considering the local climate environment. At the same time, the warehouse is equipped with various measuring instruments, and workers can check the indoor conditions at any time. Temperature and humidity regulate the environment in the warehouse.
The Bagamoyo Flour Mill is an extension of the agricultural industry. With the help of local port conditions, the processed East African colonial wheat can be directly exported in the form of flour.
In addition to the professional and technical personnel employed by the Hechingen Company, its staff, which maintain the operation of the machines, are mainly immigrants from the Austro-Hungarian Empire with a little education, supplemented by a small number of Chinese.
In the stages of transporting materials, packaging and finished products, more Chinese are needed. For these Austro-Hungarian and Chinese immigrants, simple training is still required. In addition to health and safety education, they must also be familiar with the operating principles of the machine.
The flour produced by the Bagamoyo Flour Mill will be labeled with the Hechingen Company's trademark and sold in Europe.
The returning Hechingen ocean-going trading fleet brought it back to Trieste and sold it directly through commercial outlets established by companies in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
At the same time, we can also take this opportunity to recruit immigrants. After all, this batch of flour can prove that East Africa has its own products and is not a barren land.
Bagamoyo was once one of the largest slave trading markets in East Africa. With the defeat of the Zanzibar Sultanate, Bagamoyo was also captured by the East African colonial government.
The colonial government of East Africa only opened one slave trading market to the Arabs in the port of Dar es Salaam, while the slave trading markets in Mombasa, Bagamoyo and other places were closed.
As early as the 18th century, Bagamoyo was the most important port in East Africa. At its peak, more than 50,000 indigenous slaves boarded ships and sailed from here every year.
With the development of Dar es Salaam by the Zanzibar Sultanate, Bagamoyo gradually declined. Now the East African colonial government has taken Bagamoyo up again for development.
After all, there are still too few excellent ports along the entire East African coast. They may seem adequate now, but with the development of East Africa and the increase in population, port resources will inevitably become precious in the future.
Currently, the factories that can be opened in East Africa can only be located in the coastal areas. By taking advantage of the port's maritime transportation, machines arriving from Europe can be implemented.
As for the inland, don’t even think about it for now. The cost of moving these stupid, bulky machines to the inland is too high.
Moreover, the machines of this era are relatively expensive. If they get caught in the rain, get stuck in the mud, or get bumped into each other, it will be difficult to repair them according to the conditions in East Africa.
Wheat is currently the largest food crop in the East African colonies. The annual output is still considerable, and with the arrival of immigrants and land development, the potential will become greater and greater in the future.
As for rice, in fact, compared to wheat, rice is grown in the coastal plains of East Africa, which has a distance advantage.
However, because Europe is mainly dominated by wheat crops, after industrialization, the development of agricultural machinery naturally favors wheat and other European native crops.
Even if Ernst wanted to import rice planting and processing machinery from Europe, it was impossible. Just like in his previous life, after the development of Japanese industry, he vigorously promoted the advancement of rice planting and processing technology in East Asia. First The first to realize mechanized rice production in the Far East.
So developing wheat is an important step for Ernst to enter the grain processing market. It is simple and easy to operate. Moreover, East Africa has a large land area, a wide area of arable land, and precipitation is also suitable for wheat cultivation.
Currently, the wheat planting area in the East African colonies has exceeded the rice planting area. This is based on the fact that the population in the eastern rice growing area is higher than the population in the western wheat growing area.
Wheat embodies its obvious advantages of being easy to care for and more drought-tolerant. It is very suitable for savanna climate, especially East Africa, which has significant plateau characteristics. The temperature is lower than that of the same latitude, and the yield can reach above average levels. , coupled with the advantage of planting area caused by the vast land and sparse population, the output is considerable.
The Bagamoyo Flour Mill is a food processing enterprise built on this potential advantage, further extending the agricultural industry chain, improving the level of the agricultural industry in the East African colonies, and obtaining higher profits.
(End of this chapter)