Chapter 2277
Although the sailors on the ship were polite, Zhang Jinbao also had a sense of propriety. He couldn't treat this place like a restaurant just because the other party greeted him with delicious food and drinks. There was no need to serve wine at the moment. When Li Nai comes back later, if he goes to say hello drunk, it may not be too disrespectful to him.
According to what Li Nai said yesterday, he would come to the port as soon as possible after socializing in the city. However, more than an hour passed after Zhang Jinbao and others finished lunch before Li Nai arrived at the port by carriage and boarded the ship.
"I'm sorry to keep Zhang Zhang waiting for so long. I'll have people unmoor and hoist the sails to prepare for departure." After Li Nai saw Zhang Jinbao, he still explained the reason why he showed up later than the agreed time: "Then Little Prince Annan The matter to be discussed with me today is very important, and I have to figure it out before I can leave Sanya, so I was delayed for a while in the city.”
"Third Young Master has important business, so it doesn't matter if we delay for a moment." Zhang Jinbao was just a free ride, and the other party paid for the trip, so how could he complain about such a trivial matter.
Before Li Nai came back, the sailors on the ship were actually ready to set off, so they quickly left the port after he gave the order. However, this does not mean that Li Nai has begun to take a vacation. In fact, on the way to Danzhou, he still needs to seize the time to deal with various official duties at hand.
After more than ten years of rapid development, Fulifeng has grown into a large-scale international trade organization that is rare in Ming Dynasty in this era. The scale of the industry it operates and the industries it involves far exceed that of this era. level, it is not an exaggeration to call it a new business format.
If we look at the scale of overseas operations, Fulifeng is probably already the number one business organization in Ming Dynasty. And more than 60% of its overseas industries are located on Hainan Island under Haihan's rule.
Li Nai traveled frequently between Guangzhou and Sanya in his early years. He was not just here to satisfy his personal curiosity. He was also handling various investment projects in Hainan Island for Furifeng.
In its early days, Furifeng's business areas in Hainan Island were mainly agriculture and commerce. Long-term projects with stable returns, such as plantations and business stores, were the ones Furifeng was willing to invest in. So far, Furifeng has operated as many as thirty or forty plantations and farms on Hainan Island, large and small, and its business stores can be found in every county on the island.
Under the guidance of Haihan officials, Fulifeng later began to invest in some relatively unfamiliar industries, such as deep processing of agricultural products, shipping and shipbuilding, mining and smelting, and infrastructure facilities. The income brought by these industries to Furifeng is not much worse than the traditional industries it operated in the past, and can even generate more generous profits.
However, with the rapid expansion of Furifeng's business scale, they inevitably encountered the same problem that Haihan encountered during the expansion process, that is, there were not enough operating and management personnel available. Professional ability can no longer be used as a criterion for selecting and appointing managers. Fulifeng can only try its best to dispatch relatively loyal personnel to these positions. The actual operators of many projects are even just workers transferred from Guangzhou, who may not even be able to settle accounts. Calculate clearly.
Even if Furifeng is willing to pay high salaries to poach people from other places, it still cannot keep up with the growth in employment demand. Therefore, before this problem can be effectively solved, Li Nai still needs to travel frequently between Guangzhou and Sanya to supervise and guide the business projects under Haihan's rule.
If there is enough time, Li Nai will even conduct short-term intensive training for these managers during their arrival in Hainan Island, so that they can master the various skills required for daily operations, as well as the various operating mechanisms within Fulifeng.
When he came to Sanya this time, Li Nai's schedule was as busy as usual, and because he needed to attend martial arts competitions and various related entertainments, he basically couldn't spare time to talk to the local shopkeepers, managers, and foremen in Sanya this time. These subordinates held talks, let alone skills training. As for the various financial statements, operating reports, and project plans submitted by these managers, he could only have time to slowly review them after leaving Sanya by boat.
If the way things were done in this era, Li Nai certainly should have stayed in Sanya to handle these matters before leaving. Otherwise, he would wait until he returned to Guangzhou to come up with handling opinions based on the information provided by these documents, and then write a letter and send it to Sanya. The time required will delay a lot of things.
Fortunately, Li Nai has learned to handle these matters in Haihan's way. He can send his handling opinions to Sanya via telegram from Danzhou or Guangzhou, and the local managers will implement them. This only requires a small expense, but it can save a lot of precious time. For people of Li Nai's level, time is far more precious than money, and it is easiest to handle these tasks during the voyage. Time saving approach.
So after a brief chat with Zhang Jinbao, Li Nai said that he still had official business to deal with, and returned to his exclusive cabin and stayed behind closed doors. Zhang Jinbao didn't doubt that he was there. After all, it was a great favor for him to allow his teachers and students to take a boat back to Danzhou. It was impossible for him to keep socializing with him on the way. Zhang Jinbao also specially greeted the students and asked them not to shout or yell on the boat to avoid affecting Li Nai's work.
It was not until dinner time that Li Nai came out of the cabin and took the initiative to invite Zhang Jinbao and his party to have dinner. During the dinner, Li Nai also seemingly casually inquired about the majors of these students, and proactively said that if they were interested, they could work at Fulifeng in the future, and all conditions such as salary and benefits could be discussed.
Zhang Jinbao quickly thanked Li Nai. He knew that Li Nai was not being polite. In fact, in recent years, some graduates of Qiongxi Academy have indeed joined Fulifeng to work, and the number has been increasing year by year. It was precisely because of such signs that Zhang Jinbao boldly promoted his chain school plan to Li Nai in Sanya.
In Zhang Jinbao's view, Fulifeng's need for employees is obvious, and currently there is no specialized agency that can provide Fulifeng with the professionals it needs in a long-term and stable manner. This is an excellent opportunity for Qiongxi Academy. Entry point.
There was no words to say that night. When the ship arrived at Changhua Port the next day, Li Nai proposed to stay here for a day to handle some official matters, and also invited Zhang Jinbao to visit an ironware workshop run by Furifeng here.
"I used to think that Changhua was full of government-run smelting workshops, but I didn't know that Furifeng actually had an industry here." Zhang Jinbao said to Li Nai on the carriage heading to the destination.
Furifeng's industry in Changhua must be quite large, because there is a high-end box carriage waiting at the port to welcome Li Nai's arrival. Zhang Jinbao paid special attention to the door when he got on the bus, and sure enough he saw the nameplate logo of Furifeng. It was obvious that this carriage was not temporarily hired locally, but was specially deployed here to prepare for the arrival of big shots.
"Except for ours, all the other workshops here are indeed government-run." Li Nai did not deny Zhang Jinbao's statement, because Furifeng's establishment of a workshop here was a project specially approved by the executive committee, and so far there has indeed not been a second one. Every family can enjoy such treatment.
Special materials related to the national economy and people's livelihood, such as salt and iron, were controlled by the government in all dynasties, and Haihan was no exception. Although private operators can also intervene in the industrial chain, they can only play the role of processing distributors. In principle, they are not allowed to directly intervene in the production process. Furifeng's treatment in this regard is actually no exception. He has no right to participate in the mining and subsequent smelting of Shilu iron ore. He can only purchase semi-finished steel products from government-run workshops for processing. What he does is actually the work of a blacksmith shop. It's just that Furifeng has enough capital and an official franchise, so its business scale is much larger than that of an ordinary blacksmith shop.
The carriage passed through the towns near Changhua Port and headed north for about three or four miles. It was almost leaving Changhua County before finally arriving at the place Li Nai mentioned.
Zhang Jinbao got out of the car and saw that the workshop covered an area of about ten acres. If measured by the standards of a blacksmith shop, it was indeed astonishingly large.
There is a huge coal pile on the roadside, as high as two stories high. Zhang Jinbao estimates that this pile may contain hundreds of thousands of kilograms of coal. Two heavy-duty carriages are unloading. This kind of carriage is specially designed for carrying cargo. It can carry more than two thousand kilograms of cargo at most. It can be seen everywhere in Changhua.
Upon seeing this, Zhang Jinbao said: "It's a bit far to transport coal from the port."
Zhang Jinbao is not unfamiliar with the situation in Changhua. He knows that the coal used here basically comes from the Black Earth Port across the sea. Those government-run workshops are located closer to the port than here. Judging from the distance, the coal freight rate alone is estimated to be twice as high.
Li Nai nodded and said: "That's true. Therefore, taking into account the long-term business needs, we will build a cargo terminal on the nearby coast and build a road to get there, so that coal ships from Black Earth Port can be arranged. By unloading the goods nearby, the freight can be saved.”
After hearing this, Zhang Jinbao could only lament that Furifeng was rich and could use such a simple and crude way to solve the problems encountered in business.
But in fact, Fulifeng has already done detailed cost accounting for this. If the additional annual freight investment is calculated, then building a dedicated freight terminal nearby is more cost-effective for long-term operations, because more than just goods need to be transported here. It's just coal burning, and a large amount of iron products need to be transported from here to other places. Calculated in and out, the annual freight savings can be extremely considerable. As for the time cost saved by this, it is difficult to calculate in monetary terms.
Of course, the abundant capital owned by Furifeng is indeed one of the reasons why Li Nai chose this solution, which can solve the root cause of the problem in one step. If you were an ordinary operator, you probably wouldn't have the courage to solve the problem by building dedicated cargo terminals and roads.
The managers of the workshop had already heard the news and came to welcome Li Nai's inspection. Li Nai politely introduced Zhang Jinbao's identity to his subordinates and invited him to enter the workshop to inspect the production situation.
"It turns out to be Dean Zhang. We also have people from your academy here, so they are no longer outsiders!" As soon as the steward here heard Zhang Jinbao's identity, he immediately became close to him. After all, Zhang Jinbao came with Li Nai for inspection. This may mean that there is some new cooperation with Qiongxi Academy. It will never go wrong to establish a good relationship with it first.
Zhang Jinbao said a few polite words, but actually had a similar conjecture in his mind: Since Li Nai brought him to visit this workshop, he might be planning to recruit apprentices in this industry from Qiongxi Academy in the future.
"Our raw materials here come from nearby government-run smelters, and then we process them into various civilian ironware, such as farm tools, kitchen utensils, anchor chains, etc. In the early years, these things were made by government-run workshops, but the prices were cheap and the profits were high. Low, the labor cost of government-run workshops is high, and it is not cost-effective to make these things, so we gradually allocated some of them to us. ”
As Li Nai walked, he introduced the production situation here to Zhang Jinbao: "...more than half of the ironware we produce here is actually sold locally in Hainan Island, and the remaining part is shipped to Guangdong and Guangxi for sale."
Zhang Jinbao said: "As far as I know, our country's civilian ironware is sold very cheaply. I'm afraid the third young master won't make much money in this business, right?"
Li Nai smiled and said: "That's true. Otherwise, how could the government be willing to allocate this business to us? But it doesn't matter. Furifeng is not doing this business to make a lot of money from civilian ironware. It can maintain a small profit. Just run the business here.”
If you still do this business without making money, there must be other benefits. However, Li Nai didn't take the initiative to mention it, so Zhang Jinbao couldn't ask rashly and could only ponder it secretly in his heart.
Soon Zhang Jinbao was surprised to find that there were several steam engines used for processing iron in this workshop. As far as he knew, this thing could only be used in government institutions. Qiongxi Academy wanted to develop its own steam engines in the first two years. Related projects were later urgently stopped by the government. Unexpectedly, Furifeng, with his hands and eyes, was able to install a steam engine in this ironworks workshop.
And for the first time, he saw how a steam engine cut an iron bar as thick as a thumb into sections at a very fast speed, and then curled and connected it into a chain. A blacksmith may need to work for a whole day, but it only takes a moment to complete it on this production line with a steam engine. The efficiency is probably more than a hundred times higher.
Zhang Jinbao suddenly remembered that Li Nai had just said that it was not very profitable to make ironware for civilian use, but with such a speed of production, it would be difficult not to make money. I couldn't help but ask: "Third Young Master, as far as I know, as long as steam engines are used, the cost is much lower than manpower. Why did you just say that the business here is not very profitable?"
(End of chapter)