African Entrepreneurship Record

Beliland's words were extremely colorful, but the members of the inspection team did not react at all. Instead, they took notebooks and recorded them one by one.

"Mr. Xialilian, hearing is believing, seeing is believing. Next, I will take you to the site for an on-site inspection, and you will naturally be able to see more intuitively what the conditions in Beira City are like."

Later, under the arrangement of Belilan, he took everyone directly to the urban location. At this time, many factories had been built in Beira City, but most of them were idle.

"Look, this is less than one kilometer away from the station. To the left is the Pengkui River. You can make full use of the water of the Pengkui River."

Chemical companies are generally built on rivers or seaside, because this industry is also a water-consuming enterprise and comes with serious pollution.

Therefore, chemical companies in later generations gave priority to the downstream areas of rivers or the seaside where emission standards were more relaxed. Of course, there was no strict concept of "pollution" in the 19th century. For example, the BASF headquarters was built inland on the banks of the Rhine River.

“The railway can directly transport coal, lead, zinc and other resources from Matabele Province and the central region to Beira City, and the most indispensable thing in East Africa is rubber. It is the world’s largest rubber producer. We also have A new rubber production area is planned, and Mozambique will also become an important rubber production area in East Africa.”

Mozambique, especially the central and northern parts, is an area with very abundant rainfall. Due to climate reasons, it is very suitable for rubber growth. However, after the Matabele Highlands, precipitation began to decrease due to the influence of the plateau terrain, so it was not suitable for rubber growth.

Of course, the important reason why East Africa is planning a new rubber production area in Mozambique is that it is closer to the seaport and has a large area of ​​land suitable for rubber cultivation, making it easier to export.

The application of rubber in the chemical industry is very wide. Even rubber-extended rubber products, including tires, rubber pads, etc., add a large number of chemical ingredients and therefore belong to the chemical industry. Goodyear, an American, was the first to develop and master vulcanized rubber technology, thus making rubber Usability is greatly improved.

In the early 19th century, the early rubber industry emerged in Britain and the United States. But rubber has a fatal flaw, which is that it is too sensitive to temperature. If the temperature is slightly higher, it will become soft and sticky, and it will have a peculiar smell. If the temperature is lower, it will become brittle and hard. This shortcoming left no market for rubber products, and the early rubber industry was in crisis without exception.

Goodyear made a major breakthrough in his experiments in January 1839. He accidentally heated rubber, lead oxide and sulfur together and obtained a leather-like substance. This substance does not break down at higher temperatures like elastic rubber commonly known.

However, this world-changing technology did not change Goodyear's fate. In 1860, Goodyear died in poverty.

Because the technical threshold of vulcanized rubber is low, most companies use its technology directly, including in East Africa. Goodyear had been dead for more than 30 years by this time. The rubber industry in East Africa and the world has developed greatly thanks to this American. .

East Africa, in particular, stands at the forefront of the development of the automobile industry. Coupled with East Africa's early bets on the rubber planting industry, East Africa has made huge profits in the rubber industry.

This is also very important to BASF. As a giant in the German chemical industry, BASF has also made breakthroughs in the rubber industry in recent years. The fundamental reason for this result is that cheap East African rubber has entered the German market in large quantities.

Although the land in Germany is fertile, the main business of the Junker nobles is still grain cultivation. After all, the place is small, and the crops that can be planted are mainly grain crops.

East Africa is far inferior to Germany in terms of growing food crops, especially in terms of mechanization and the development of the fertilizer industry. Germany relies on hundreds of thousands of square kilometers of land to feed a population of nearly 50 million nationwide, and it relies on agriculture. technological progress.

Of course, this is related to the agricultural development strategy of East Africa. In recent years, East African agriculture has increasingly shifted towards the cash crop industry.

In the field of commercial grain agriculture, there are too many competitors, including the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Tsarist Russia, which are all powerful countries in this field.

However, in the field of tropical cash crops, the only competitors in East Africa are Brazil, small tropical countries in South America, and India. These four main competitors are France, which has a large number of overseas colonies. France barely counts half of them.

Moreover, these tropical countries or forces are far inferior to East Africa in the field of agricultural technology, just as East Africa lags behind European and American countries in commercial grain agriculture.

At the same time, the land area of ​​East Africa far exceeds the above-mentioned tropical countries. Even Brazil is nearly one-third smaller than East Africa. Moreover, Brazil's population is also weak. The country's population is less than 20 million, about 15 million.

Brazil in the 19th century was not the time when Brazil in its previous life vigorously developed its inland areas. Today, Brazil’s population is mainly concentrated in a small area in the southeast. The Amazon rainforest in the north accounts for nearly half of the country’s area. The development of the inland savannah area is also Compared with East Africa, it is negligible.

However, the climate conditions in southeastern Brazil are indeed superior. It has a subtropical monsoon climate, similar to southern Mozambique in East Africa.

The current preferred destination for European immigrants is obviously Argentina in the south. In addition, Portugal, the host country of Brazil, has a small population, so the current development of Brazil is completely expected.

In other words, without the support of East Africa from the Far East and the German region, the two regions with the most serious population outflow in the world, it would be impossible to develop the African continent in a short period of time.

After the population took shape, East Africa's development naturally changed at a rapid pace. Don't look at the fact that most of East Africa is basically undeveloped. You must know that the current population of East Africa is mainly concentrated in the central and eastern regions.

The combined area of ​​these two regions is nearly three million square kilometers. Even before the South African War, East Africa's population and economic scale had reached the standards of a world power.

…

"Mayor Beliland, thank you for your introduction. We will truthfully introduce the specific situation of Beira City to the headquarters. As for the specific results, we still have to look at the decision of the headquarters." Charlier said politely.

Boliland naturally knows what Xialilian said, but the purpose of the inspection team is to report the data analysis. The opinions of the members of the inspection team are extremely important, and their specific descriptions will definitely be subjective.

Therefore, after the initial inspection of Beira City, the Beira Municipal Government still provided a full set of considerate services to everyone.

Three days later.

The members of the inspection team ended their trip in Beira City, and Belilan led city officials to see them off at the dock in person.

However, Xialilian and others had a very strict manner of speaking. No matter how much Belilan made insinuations, he would never say another word.

In this way, in an uneasy mood, Boliland waved goodbye to the members of the BASF inspection team. Amidst the whistle of the cruise ship, Boliland sighed: "We have done everything we have to do, and as for the result, it is no longer ours." Now that we can control it, let’s go back!”

However, Belilan's expectations were not in vain. One month later, the central government of East Africa officially issued instructions to the Beira Municipal Government to fully cooperate with BASF in setting up a factory in Beira.

Of course, Beira City does not squeeze out the quota of other cities, because Mombasa City has also successfully established a BASF branch.

BASF is very optimistic about the market prospects in East Africa, so it decided to set up branches in Mombasa and Beira at the same time.

Needless to say, Mombasa itself and Nairobi in the west are important cities in the textile industry in East Africa, with excellent basic conditions.

The selection of the city of Beira is entirely a bet made by BASF after understanding the industrial development situation in central East Africa, because BASF's main business is textile dyes, and the second largest textile industry center in East Africa is in Beira, Matabele Province. Wayo City, so BASF chose Beira City as the location of its branch. In fact, Xiangzhuang danced his sword with the intention of Peigong.