I want to be emperor

Chapter 587 Liu Jiaquan also wants to lie down and grab money
Luo Qixiong, he was born in a traditional shipbuilding family, his father, grandfather and even the previous generations were all shipbuilders.

He himself also worked in a government-run shipbuilding workshop in the Ming Dynasty. When the Great Chu Empire took control of Jiangnan, he took over a large number of various workshops officially controlled by the Ming Dynasty, and integrated personnel and resources, and then established Various factories run by the Ministry of Industry.

Like everyone else, Luo Qixiong took advantage of the opportunity to enter the Songjiang Naval Shipyard and began to build warships for the Great Chu Empire Navy.

Unlike ordinary shipbuilders who were illiterate and relied entirely on experience, Luo Qixiong had read books when he was a child. He liked to think about shipbuilding and always tried to find better ways to solve problems.

Because he has read books, he also likes to think about various things, accepts and even takes the initiative to specialize in research on the new era, and puts forward various opinions, so he quickly became a core technician in Songjiang Naval Shipyard, and his salary is getting better and better. come higher.

In the past few years, he has participated in the construction of many ships, and is also the main technical leader of the Jinling-class battleship.

Logically speaking, he should be satisfied with such a life. After all, he has already surpassed most people. Whether it is income or social status, he can be regarded as the upper class.

If he went further, he would be able to enter the senior management of Songjiang Naval Shipyard.

But people are ambitious, and Luo Qixiong is no exception!
After he became a core technician, and also a middle-level manager, he still wanted more, especially if he wanted to be rich and wealthy, and even more so, he wanted a career that really belonged to him, a shipyard that belonged to him!
He dreams of it!
This is not only his dream, but also the dream of generations of his dead father and even his grandfather.

When he saw that the shipbuilding industry has been extremely hot in recent years, and a large number of gentry and ordinary businessmen have invested in the shipbuilding industry, he finally couldn't sit still.

He contacted many colleagues who also wanted to go out to start a business, and raised funds to start a business together with full confidence.

But after resigning and starting a business, I realized that starting a business is not that simple. First of all, the start-up capital is very troublesome.

Although they raised funds together to start a business, Luo Qixiong paid the bulk of the money. For this reason, he even sold his only house and the land of his old home. Including the wages he had accumulated over the past few years, the total amounted to nearly 2000 taels of silver.

Others voted for a few hundred taels in total.

However, this added up to less than 3000 taels of start-up capital, which was not enough at all.

Not to mention building a really large shipyard, even the equipment needed by the shipyard can't afford a few.

In desperation, they could only set up a small workshop to help build some small inland and offshore vessels, and at the same time, they continued to find ways to find external funds.

Finally, under the introduction of some officials from the Ministry of Industry and Commerce, they found a financial bank to apply for a start-up loan.

The financial bank is willing to provide them with a loan. This is also the financial policy formulated by the empire to support industry and commerce, especially to support industrial development. It provides policy loans to some technical industries that lack funds, and the interest is very low.

But because there is no collateral, the total amount is not too much, and a total of 1 taels of silver loan was obtained.

This 1 taels of silver is naturally a lot to ordinary people, but it is nothing to the shipbuilding industry.

In order to enter the shipbuilding industry, the Li family made an initial investment of 15 taels of silver, and then added an additional investment of 10 taels of silver, making a total investment of 25 taels of silver. Only then did the dry dock and equipment be completed in a short time. And other hardware equipment, while recruiting a large number of craftsmen and ordinary workers.

Especially when digging the core technical team from the Guangzhou Shipyard, it cost a lot of money. It is said that the lead engineer gave 3000 taels of silver for the settlement fee alone, and also gave a small share of shares.

All the way to open the way, this was the birth of the third Li's shipyard in the Great Chu Empire that can build a thousand tons of new sea ships.

As for Luo Qixiong and the others, their self-raised funds were less than 3000 taels, and their loan funds were 1 taels.

This amount of money is actually a lot for most small and medium shipyards in China, even if it is a government-run shipyard invested and established by many local governments, such as Ningbo Shipyard, which is also a shipyard directly under the Ministry of Industry invested and constructed by the Ministry of Industry, but The initial investment was only 8000 taels of silver.

In addition, the Zhejiang Province itself also invested in the establishment of a shipyard in Wenzhou. The finance of Zhejiang Province and the Wenzhou government jointly invested in it, and it was under the jurisdiction of the Zhejiang Industry Department. The initial investment was only 5000 taels of silver.

Luo Qixiong and his Luohua Shipyard can obtain 1 taels through loans, plus 3000 taels raised by themselves. This investment is actually not much worse than that of Wenzhou Shipyard.

However... this investment scale is still not enough for Luo Qixiong and the others!

Because their goals are bigger!
Although Luo Qixiong and the others have a small workshop for the time being, taking orders for sand boats and other small inland and offshore vessels, their goal has always been to build large ships, and they are still new types of large ships with thousands of tons.

That's what people do!
Luo Qixiong is, the people he brought together to start a business are also professional talents.

To be honest, it is a waste of talents if you ask them to build some sand boats.

This is the fourth shipbuilding team in the Great Chu Empire that has the experience and technical ability to build thousand-ton large ships. Well, this is actually the reason why the Jiangnan Branch of the Finance Bank is willing to provide them with a low-interest unsecured loan of 1 taels of silver. , This is replaced by ordinary people who still want 1 taels of low-interest unsecured loans, dreaming.

The Ministry of Industry and Commerce is also looking forward to seeing the emergence of a fourth shipyard in the Great Chu Empire with the ability to build large-scale new sea-going ships.

It's just that the money is not enough!

Luo Qixiong and the others have already made a plan. Even if they save some investment in various aspects, the initial investment must be at least 8 taels of silver.

The 8 taels of silver need to be used to purchase machinery and equipment for shipbuilding. These machinery and equipment are not cheap, and many of them need to be ordered from Hantian Machinery Factory.

Especially some large hydrodynamic equipment is very expensive!

In addition, there are a large number of small machines powered by hand or animals. Although these machines are small, they still need to be pushed by hand or with mules, but some precision equipment is very expensive.

A precision boring machine with a size of less than ten feet and using hydraulic power can cost thousands of taels of silver.

You said why it is so expensive, because this thing is used to process steel materials with extremely high precision. In order to ensure the processing accuracy and durability, the entire boring machine is made of top-level materials, and many processes are performed one by one by senior craftsmen. This kind of hydraulic boring machine itself represents the top basic industrial level of the Great Chu Empire.

So don’t look at the basic technology of the Great Chu Empire today, it seems that a lot of machinery and equipment are just wood and iron... But these are the lowest-grade goods, and some high-end machinery are extremely expensive. And the technical content is very high for this era.

It is a pity that most of the parts of this kind of high-tech mechanical equipment can only be polished slowly by experienced craftsmen, and there is no way to achieve mass production in the same industry.

In fact, not to mention the present, even many precision parts in the 21st century rely heavily on manual work!
It is very common in the aerospace field, even if it is the lithography machine in the semiconductor industry that ordinary people are more familiar with... Well, everyone should know this thing, but what you don’t know is that the ultra-high-precision lenses in the lithography machine are all The masters rely on their rich experience to polish it bit by bit. Although mechanical polishing is also used in this process, the personal experience of the masters cannot be replaced by machines.

The reason why the output of the top lithography machines in the Netherlands is limited is because the lens production capacity of Zeiss is limited, and why the production capacity is limited because the masters are limited...

This stuff, no matter how much money you have, you can't make it in a short time, because such a master craftsman needs to spend a lot of time accumulating experience, cultivating slowly, and not rushing...

This has been the case in the 21st century, and it is even more so in the Great Chu Empire in the middle of the seventeenth century.

Although the industrialization of the Great Chu Empire is in full swing, all kinds of water-powered machinery are blooming almost everywhere, but in fact, the core components of the top mechanical equipment are still handcrafted by senior craftsmen...

Of course, no matter how advanced the times are, even if it is also handcrafted, many tools or equipment can be used.

For example, grinding, drilling, etc., can be replaced by some mechanical equipment.

But no matter what, top craftsmen are still indispensable.

This has also led to the extremely limited production capacity of top-level equipment. Once the output is reduced, the price will naturally not be lowered there.

As for some of the equipment that Luohua Shipyard wanted, many of them were top-level mechanical equipment for the industrial circles of the Great Chu Empire, with low output and expensive prices.

Or it is some large equipment, which is equally expensive.

In addition to equipment, there are workshops and docks.

These hardware investments are indispensable, and there is no way to build ships without them.

Finally, there is still a huge investment, that is, labor costs.

It is true that manpower is worthless in the Great Chu Empire. In the early years, they didn't even need to pay wages, and they could recruit a young and strong labor force by just giving them food.

Well, even now, in many places, as long as you take care of the food, people will work for you without money.

But the problem is, these are ordinary laborers.

And the shipbuilding industry, no matter what era it is in, is a capital and technology-intensive industry!
Shipyards need a large number of skilled workers who need to understand technology, and the salaries of these skilled workers are not low.

On the Songjiang side, the monthly salary for recruiting the most common shipbuilding skilled worker ranges from three to four taels of silver to as much as five or six taels of silver.

If it is a technical management personnel with slightly better skills who can lead a team to carry out construction, then the price is very expensive, starting with a monthly salary of 30 to [-] taels of silver.

As for senior core technicians, you can refer to Li's Shipyard to poach people from Guangzhou Shipyard... Settlement expenses cost several thousand taels of silver, and the monthly salary starts at hundreds of dollars, and you have to give shares.

Although Luo Qixiong pulled a group of people out, the dozens of people were not enough, so he had to continue to hire people from outside.

In addition, although these founder teams have come to start a business and are allocated shares, they have to pay wages!
After all, the shares are not divided equally, Luo Qixiong alone occupies the majority of the shares, and the remaining people, more or less, add up to about [-]% of the shares.

If you don't get paid, wouldn't it be a loss for others to follow you?
Therefore, the salary still has to be paid, but everyone knows that they are just starting a business and are willing to get a basic salary.

Then recruit technicians from the outside, and at the same time train the recruited ordinary workers to become skilled shipbuilders. These are all labor costs, and there are a lot of them.

Therefore, Luo Qixiong or Luohua Shipyard is short of money now!

In this way, they sent people to various places, especially Guangzhou to find money. They heard that the business at Li's Shipyard was very hot, and the orders were full.

They just want to get some start-up orders from some sea merchants who can't line up, so that they can solve the initial start-up capital problem.

In this way, they found Liu Jiaquan.

Liu Jiaquan, this person is not well-known among ordinary people, even in Guangzhou, not many ordinary people have heard of the name Liu Jiaquan, and his Liuhe Trading Company is also very inconspicuous.

But everyone in the industry knows that Liu Jiaquan is an old pirate, no, an old sea merchant... I don't know how rich his Liuhe Trading Company is.

But in the city of Guangzhou where trading companies gather, this Liuhe trading company can squeeze into the top [-] ranks.

Maritime merchants these days are all rich, not to mention the top [-].

The most important thing is that this Liu family has ambitions!
Unlike many trading companies who just run a fixed route, sailing along the monsoon, and basically sailing with naval ships, this Liu family sails out of season.

Every winter, when people sail south, he runs back from Nanyang in reverse.

Which means greater risk, greater profit.

It can be seen from this that Liu Jiaquan has great ambitions and courage.

It is such a person who is determined to spend huge sums of money to order a new type of big ship, and even take some risks for it.

Otherwise, why did Luo Hua Shipbuilding come to block people? It's because they like you in this area.

And the people at Luo Hua Shipyard got it right.

At first, Liu Jiaquan didn't care much about Luohua Shipyard, and thought it was another liar, but after going back and looking through their information carefully, there was a possibility.

According to the information, Luo Qixiong, their founder and the governor of Luohua Shipyard, was a former senior engineer in Songjiang Naval Shipyard. He once led a team to build many naval battleships and large armed merchant ships.

Its core shipbuilding technical team is also from Songjiang Naval Shipyard.

At the same time, this Luohua shipyard had previously obtained an unsecured low-interest loan from the Finance Bank, and also obtained the title of technology enterprise support issued by the Ministry of Industry and Commerce.

This Luohua shipyard seems to be really something!
After discovering this, Liu Jiaquan did not act rashly, but asked many friends about these Luohua Shipyards, and after several days, he called the people from Luohua Shipyards to discuss.

But this time the negotiation was beyond the expectation of the representative of Luohua Shipyard Company.

They thought that the Liu family was going to place an order, but they didn't expect that the Liu family would ask them if they needed investment.

"I see that you are short of money and orders, but our Liuhe Trading Company has money and orders!"

"How about it, are you interested in cooperating!"

Today's shipbuilding industry, to be precise, is a new type of shipbuilding industry that lies in robbery, and Li's Shipbuilding is the best example.

He, Liu Jiaquan, also wanted to lie down and grab money!

(End of this chapter)