I want to be emperor

Chapter 273 Daye Industrial Base
On February [-]th of the second year of Chengshun of the Great Chu Empire, Luo Zhixue did not stay in Wuchang City as usual, but took the time to go to Daye, a hundred kilometers south of Wuchang.

The purpose of going to Daye is very simple, it is to inspect many factories in Daye County.

Since winning Wuchang Mansion in the early winter of last year, the Great Chu Empire began to integrate the iron mines and copper mines in the Daye area, and established two core smelters, the Daye Iron Works and the Daye Copper Works.

Immediately afterwards, a series of factories such as Hantian Arsenal and Hantian Machinery Factory were established.

Around Dayeli's iron ore, copper ore and other minerals, an industrial base integrating mining, smelting, machinery, and forging weapons has been established.

Of course, this industrial base has nothing to do with civilian use. All factories are built to manufacture weapons and equipment such as guns and armor.

Only when some factories have spare capacity will they be supplied to the private sector.

Among them, the Daye Iron Works sells iron materials to the outside world, and the Hantian Machinery Factory sells various iron farm tools and cooking utensils to the outside world.

After all, the Great Chu Empire controlled many areas, and there were many people under its rule. They also needed various iron products in their daily life, agricultural production, and handicraft production.

Especially agricultural tools, knives, and cooking utensils are indispensable.

Without these things, there is no way to farm and live!
Therefore, even though Hantian Machinery Factory is mainly to supply various mechanical products to national defense factories, it has to open up a special share, specializing in the production of various civilian iron products and copper products for civilian use.

It’s funny to say that, I thought that the agricultural tools produced by Hantian Machinery Factory were of good quality and not expensive. In addition to internal supply and sales, there were actually some agricultural tools. The knives were purchased by those smugglers and transported to northern Jiangxi and even Jiangnan for processing. sell.

This sales volume is not small!

Can you tell me whether Ting will ban this kind of business...

People don't want to check it anymore, and they even hope that more iron products will come out of Huguang.

The control of iron products in the traditional Central Plains dynasty often prohibited the export of iron products, and rarely said that it would prohibit the import of iron products from other people's homes.

Foreign export is prohibited, especially the export of iron products to grassland ethnic groups. That is because iron is the highest level of strategic materials in grasslands. If you buy iron materials from your side, they will use them to forge weapons later.

As for domestic imports, this is not a problem. Even the Ming court is eager for those merchants to get out and sell all the iron products of the fake Chu, so that the fake Chu army will not have enough iron products to make weapons. In turn, the army can free up more iron products for casting weapons.

However, they obviously underestimated the iron output of the Great Chu Empire, and even more underestimated the demand for iron materials in the defense industry of the Great Chu Empire.

The Great Chu Empire has integrated the mining and smelting industries of Daye, and there are 6 or [-] miners recruited from various sources...

Including a large number of prisoners of war, refugees, young adults in nearby areas, etc.

Coupled with the large number of local miners, the number of miners in the Daye area has doubled many times.

At the same time, in order to dig more ore and transport ore better, the Great Chu Empire also built a large number of infrastructure facilities. For example, in order to better transport iron ore, the Daye Mining Bureau of the Great Chu Empire directly laid wooden Rails are made and transported by railcars pushed by horse-drawn people.

And it is still building this kind of wooden track between various mining areas and the Daye Iron Works.

Things like trains will not be available for a while, but it is still possible to build a wooden rail car.

In terms of smelting, in addition to increasing the number of workers and engaging in crowd tactics, the Daye Iron Works of the Great Chu Empire also adopted more types of machinery and equipment.

This also made the mining and smelting industry level of the Great Chu Empire remain scumbag, but the output has increased significantly.

Not to mention the stage of forging all kinds of iron products, Hantian Machinery Factory and various arsenals that use various mechanical equipment, especially hydraulic mechanical equipment, their production efficiency is not comparable to that of primitive and traditional manual workshops .

After several months of construction, the factories in Daye have taken initial shape, and some of them have started small-scale trial production.

Among them is the most core factory in the entire Daye Industrial Construction, the Hantian Arsenal, which started production.

Standing in front of the Daye Industrial Base, Luo Zhixue looked at a large area of ​​factory buildings in front of him, while Yuan Gaofeng, Shangshu of the Ministry of Industry, introduced to Luo Zhixue:
"According to His Majesty's will, when we built the factories in Daye, we learned from the construction experience of the factories in Xiangyang, and adopted the method of concentrating all the factories in the same place to reduce the cost and time of land leveling, and better solve water supply and transportation. Problems can also better speed up the flow of raw materials and parts between factories!"

"That's how we have this industrial base!"

"Many major factories in the entire base are built along the riverside. At the same time, we have also dredged and diverted the two small rivers here, and introduced the water from the Yangtze River to drive hydraulic equipment!"

"On the shore, we have built three piers, one of which is a charcoal dock, which is specially used to receive and store charcoal transported from various places. Whether we are making iron or forging, we need a lot of charcoal. At present, it has been obtained from Huguang Charcoal is widely collected and purchased from various places, and the quantity is sufficient, enough for us to use!"

"The other two are ordinary piers, used to transport iron materials, iron products, and weapons and equipment to the outside world!"

"Beside the charcoal pier is our ironworks, to the north of the ironworks is our Hantian Machinery Factory, and to the north of the machinery factory is our Hantian Arsenal!"

"There are sixteen other factories in the surrounding area!"

"In the industrial zone, we have built wooden tracks connecting the docks and warehouses of various factories. The transportation of goods is very convenient."

Following Yuan Gaofeng's explanation, Luo Zhixue and his party also entered the industrial area and walked around along several wide main roads.

Although Luo Zhixue knew about the situation in the Daye industrial base from various reports before, even the construction of every major factory had been personally approved by him in advance.

But looking at the description on paper, it feels completely different from seeing a large factory in person.

"The scale of the Daye Industrial Base is much larger than that of the Xiangyang Industrial Base!"

Luo Zhixue looked at the many huge delivery rooms in the Daye Iron Works in front of him, as well as several tall chimneys, and couldn't help asking: "How much iron can the Daye Iron Works produce now?"

When Yuan Gaofeng heard this question, he raised his chest immediately, and said in a proud tone: "Your Majesty, the first phase of our Daye Iron Works has been put into operation, and the current production capacity can reach 5000 million catties per year!"

"Now the second phase of the factory is still under construction. After the second phase of the project is completed and put into operation in the second half of the year, our annual iron production can reach [-] million catties!"

"In addition to supplying these iron materials to Daye's local arsenals and other factories for consumption, some of them will be shipped to Xiangyang for consumption by Xiangyang arsenals and other factories, and a very small part will be supplied to private workshops to make civilian agricultural tools and knives , cooking utensils and more!"

When Luo Zhixue heard about the current production capacity of 5000 million catties and the future production capacity of [-] million catties, the smile on his face became slower.

Regardless of the conversion of 5000 million catties, it is less than [-] tons, and the estimated production capacity of [-] million catties in the future is less than [-] tons.

Compared with later generations, this data is not worth mentioning even in modern times.

But you have to know, whether this will be a later age, or even the modern industrial revolution period.

Before the Industrial Revolution, iron production was very low. The iron production in the late Ming Dynasty was estimated to be only [-] to [-] tons. This is the data of all the messy production in the country.

At the same time, Europe and other regions were not much better, or even worse...

And the Great Chu Empire can achieve the current iron output of [-] tons by relying on only one Day Smelting Iron Works!

Not to mention, there is actually more than one Daye iron factory in the Daye area. This Daye iron factory is only a government-run iron factory directly under the Ministry of Industry, and there are still some private iron factory workshops still preserved in the Daye area. The workshops vary in size, and the quality of the iron they produce varies, but if put together, it is estimated that they can have an annual production capacity of several thousand tons.

After all, Daye used to be the most important iron and copper production base in the Huguang area, and even in the entire middle and upper reaches of the Yangtze River. There are many iron-making workshops in this place.

Later, the Great Chu Empire integrated the local iron-making workshops, but failed to integrate all the iron-making workshops. Therefore, there are a large number of private iron-making workshops in Daye.

And the iron production capacity of these workshops will eventually be used by the Great Chu Empire.

A large amount of iron production capacity, this is the confidence of the Great Chu Empire to manufacture various weapons and equipment on a large scale, and at the same time be able to supply large quantities of private iron products.

Now the Great Chu Empire even let go of the behavior of smugglers who sold their own iron products to the areas controlled by the Ming Dynasty. Well, not only did they ignore it, the government even supported this behavior.

After all, the Great Chu Empire purchased a large amount of various strategic materials, including saltpeter, sulfur and even table salt, through Li's Fenghe Commercial Firm and other commercial firms.

It costs money to purchase these materials, and it costs a lot of money.

The Great Chu Empire cannot say that it only spends money on purchases but does not export products. If that is the case, it will simply not survive.

And Huguang originally had a large amount of material that could be exported to make money, and that was food.

However, the Great Chu Empire strictly prohibited the export of grain for its own use and also to prevent its own grain from being used by the Ming court. Any grain merchants who dared to export grain would directly and decisively raid their homes and exterminate their clans!
Grain can no longer be shipped out, and other odds and ends are not enough to fill the trade deficit. Now that there are iron products with higher value and the same huge demand, the trade deficit can be reversed.

Textiles also undertake this task. The Great Chu Empire has set up several textile factories in Xiangyang and Hanyang. The cotton yarn and cotton cloth produced by them are not only used for their own use but also sold in Huguang. The quality is stable and the price is cheaper. It began to flow into Jiangxi, Nanzhili and other places through Fenghe Commercial Bank and other commercial firms.

It's just that the current textile technology is still so-so, that is, relying on large-scale assembly line production to improve a certain production efficiency and reduce management costs, this can barely lower some costs for external sales.

To be honest, in fact, the cloth produced in Hanyang and Xiangyang of the Great Chu Empire does not have much advantage over the local cloth in the Jiangnan area.

Regarding this point, Luo Zhixue already had an idea.

(End of this chapter)