Luo Qixiong comes from a traditional shipbuilding family. His father, grandfather and even previous generations were all shipbuilders.
He himself previously worked in a government-run shipbuilding workshop in the Ming Dynasty. When the Chu Empire controlled Jiangnan, it took over a large number of various workshops officially controlled by the Ming Dynasty, integrated personnel and resources, and then established Various factories run by the Ministry of Industry.
Luo Qixiong, like others, entered the Songjiang Naval Shipyard and began building warships for the Da Chu Empire Navy.
Unlike ordinary shipbuilding craftsmen who were illiterate and relied solely on experience, Luo Qixiong read books when he was young. He liked to think about shipbuilding and always tried to find better ways to solve problems.
Because he has read books and likes to think about various things, he accepts new times and even takes the initiative to study them and puts forward various opinions. Therefore, he quickly became a core technician at Songjiang Naval Shipyard, and his salary and benefits were also getting higher and higher. Come higher and higher.
In the past few years, he has participated in the construction of many ships and is still the main technical person in charge of the Jinling-class battleship.
Logically speaking, he should be satisfied with this kind of life. After all, he has surpassed most people. In terms of income and social status, he can be considered to be in the upper class.
If he goes further, he will be able to enter the senior management of Songjiang Naval Shipyard.
But everyone is ambitious, and Luo Qixiong is no exception!
After becoming a core technician and a middle-level manager, he wanted more, especially wealth and wealth, and a career that truly belonged to him, a shipyard of his own!
He only dreamed of it!
This is not only his dream, but also the dream of generations such as his dead father and even his grandfather.
When he saw that the shipbuilding industry had become extremely prosperous in recent years, with a large number of gentry and ordinary businessmen investing in the shipbuilding industry, he finally couldn't sit still.
He contacted many colleagues who also wanted to start a business, and they confidently raised funds to start a business together.
But after I quit my job and started my own business, I realized that starting a business is not that simple. First of all, starting up capital is very troublesome.
Although they raised funds to start a business together, Luo Qixiong still provided the bulk of the money. For this reason, he even sold his only house and the land in his hometown. Together with the wages he had accumulated in the past few years, the total was nearly two thousand taels of silver.
Others only invested a few hundred taels in total.
However, the total starting capital, which was less than three thousand taels of silver, was simply not enough.
Let alone building a truly large shipyard, we can't even afford a few pieces of equipment needed for the shipyard.
In desperation, they could only set up a small workshop to help build some small inland and offshore boats, and at the same time, they continued to think of 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 business loan.
The Finance 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 industrial development. It provides policy loans to some technical industries that lack funds at very low interest rates.
However, because there was no collateral, the total amount was not much, and a total of only 10,000 taels of silver was obtained as a loan.
This ten thousand taels of silver is naturally a lot for 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 150,000 taels of silver, and subsequently invested an additional 100,000 taels of silver. A total of 250,000 taels of silver was invested, and the business was completed in a short period of time. Shipyards, equipment and other hardware equipment, while recruiting a large number of craftsmen and ordinary workers.
Especially when recruiting the core technical team from the Guangzhou Shipyard, it cost a huge amount of money. It is said that one of the leading engineers was given three thousand taels of silver just for the settlement fee, and a small amount of shares were also given.
With money clearing the way, the third Li shipyard in the Chu Empire, capable of building new large-scale ships of 1,000 tons, was born.
As for Luo Qixiong and others, they have less than 3,000 taels of self-raised funds and 10,000 taels of loan funds.
This amount of money is actually quite a lot for most small and medium-sized shipyards in the country, even for many government-run shipyards invested and established by local governments, such as Ningbo Shipyard, which is also a shipyard directly under the Ministry of Industry directly invested and constructed by the Ministry of Industry. However, The initial investment was only twenty-eight thousand taels of silver.
In addition, the Zhejiang local government also invested in and established a shipyard in Wenzhou. The Zhejiang Provincial Finance Department and the Wenzhou Government jointly invested the money, and it was under the jurisdiction of the Zhejiang Industry Department. Its initial investment was only fifteen thousand taels of silver.
Luo Qixiong and his Luohua Shipyard were able to obtain 10,000 taels through loans, plus the 3,000 taels raised by themselves, this investment is actually not much worse than the Wenzhou Shipyard.
However... this investment scale is still not enough for Luo Qixiong and others!
Because their goal is bigger!
Although Luo Qixiong and the others temporarily have a small workshop that accepts orders for sand ships and other small inland river and offshore vessels, their goal has always been to build large-scale ships, and they are still new-type large-scale ships with thousands of tons.
This is what people do!
Luo Qixiong is the same, and the people he brings together to start a business are also professional talents.
To be honest, it's a waste of talent if you ask them to build some sand ships.
This is the fourth shipbuilding team in the Dachu Empire that has the experience and technical capabilities to build large-scale ships of one thousand tons. Well, this is actually the reason why Jiangnan Branch of the Finance Bank is willing to provide them with a low-interest unsecured loan of ten thousand taels of silver. , this is what ordinary people would dream about if they still want a low-interest unsecured loan of 10,000 taels.
The Ministry of Industry and Commerce is also looking forward to seeing the emergence of a fourth shipyard in the Chu Empire capable of building large new sea-going ships.
But the money is still not enough!
Luo Qixiong and the others have already made plans. Even if they save some investment in various aspects, the initial investment must be at least 80,000 taels of silver.
These 80,000 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-scale hydropower equipment is very expensive!
In addition, there are a large number of small manual or animal-powered machines. Although these machines are small, they still need to be pushed manually or by mules, but some precision equipment is very expensive.
A precision boring machine that is no more than ten feet in size and uses hydraulic power can cost thousands of taels of silver.
Why is it so expensive? Because this thing is used to process steel with extremely high precision. In order to ensure processing accuracy and durability, the entire boring machine is made of the highest quality materials. Many processes are performed step by step by senior craftsmen. Polished from point to point, this water-powered boring machine itself represents the top level of contemporary basic industry in the Chu Empire.
So despite the fact that the contemporary basic technology of the Da Chu Empire seems to be not very good, many mechanical equipment seem to be just wood and iron... But these are the lowest quality goods, and some high-quality 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 highly technical mechanical equipment can only be polished slowly by hand by senior craftsmen, and there is no way to mass-produce it in the same industry.
In fact, let alone today, even many precision parts in the 21st century rely heavily on handwork!
It is very common in the aerospace field, even the lithography machines in the semiconductor industry that ordinary people are familiar with... Well, everyone should know this stuff, but what they don’t know is that the ultra-high-precision lenses in the lithography machines are 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 top lithography machines in the Netherlands have limited production is because Zeiss’ lens production capacity is limited. Why the production capacity is limited is because the masters are limited...
No matter how much money you have, you can't make this thing in a short time, because such a master craftsman needs a lot of time to accumulate experience and cultivate it slowly, so you can't rush it...
This has been the case in the twenty-first century, and it is even more so in the Chu Empire now in the mid-seventeenth century.
Although the industrialization of the Da Chu Empire was in full swing, with all kinds of water-powered machinery blooming almost everywhere, in fact, the core components of the top-notch mechanical equipment were handmade by senior craftsmen...
Of course, as times advance, even if it is made by hand, many tools or equipment can be used.
For example, grinding and drilling can be assisted by some mechanical equipment.
But no matter what, top craftsmen are still indispensable.
This also leads to the extremely limited production capacity of top-level equipment. Once the output is reduced, the price will naturally not be that low.
As for some of the equipment that Luohua Shipyard wanted, many of them were top-notch mechanical equipment for the Dachu Empire's industrial sector, with low output and high 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. Without them, there is no way to build a ship.
Finally, there is another point of great investment, and that is the labor cost.
It is true that manpower was worthless in the Chu Empire. In the early years, there was no need to pay workers, and a young and strong labor force could be recruited by just giving them food.
Well, this is the case even now. In many places, as long as you are in charge of the food, people will work for you for free.
But the problem is, these are ordinary workers.
The shipbuilding industry, no matter in what era, is a capital- and technology-intensive industry!
Shipyards require a large number of skilled workers who understand technology, and the wages of these skilled workers are not low.
Here in Songjiang, recruiting the most ordinary shipbuilding technical worker will cost you as little as three or four taels of silver per month, or as much as five or six taels of silver.
If it is a technical manager with slightly better skills who can lead a team to carry out construction, the price is very expensive, and the monthly salary can easily start at twenty or thirty taels of silver.
As for senior core technical personnel, you can refer to Li's Shipyard to recruit people from Guangzhou Shipyard... Settling expenses will cost several thousand taels of silver, and the monthly salary will start at hundreds of dollars, and you will also be given shares.
Although Luo Qixiong brought a group of people out, these dozens of people were not enough, and he had to continue to hire people from outside.
In addition, although the founder team came here to start a business and were allocated shares, they had to be paid!
After all, the shares are not equally divided. Luo Qixiong alone occupies the majority of the shares, and the remaining people, more or less, only account for about 30% of the shares in total.
If you don't get paid, wouldn't it be a loss if people follow you?
Therefore, the salary still has to be paid, but everyone knows that when they start a business, they are willing to get a basic salary.
Then recruit technical personnel from outside, and at the same time train the recruited ordinary workers to train them into skilled shipbuilding workers. These are all labor costs, and they are quite a lot.
Therefore, Luo Qixiong or Luohua Shipyard is very short of money now!
In this way, they sent people to various places, especially Guangzhou, to look for money. They heard that business at Li's Shipyard was very prosperous and the orders were full.
They just wanted to get some start-up orders from some maritime merchants who couldn't queue up, so that they could solve the initial start-up capital problem.
In this way, they found Liu Jiaquan.
Liu Jiaquan 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 this Liu family is an old pirate, no, an old maritime businessman... I don't know how rich his Liuhe Trading Company is.
"Gene Era"
But in Guangzhou, a city where trading companies gather together, Liuhe Trading Company can rank among the top twenty.
All maritime merchants these days are rich, let alone those in the top twenty.
The most important thing is that the Liu family is all ambitious!
Unlike many trading companies that only run fixed routes, sail along the monsoon, and basically set off with naval ships, the Liu family all sails out of season.
Every winter, when others set sail southward, he would go back from Nanyang.
Which means greater risks and greater profits.
It can be seen from this that Liu Jiaquan is extremely ambitious and courageous.
It is this kind of person who will make up his mind to spend huge sums of money to order new large-scale ships, and even take some risks for this purpose.
Otherwise, why did Luo Hua Shipbuilding come to block people? It’s because they have taken a fancy to you in this area.
The people at Luohua Shipyard were right.
At first, Liu Jiaquan didn't pay much attention to the Luohua Shipbuilding Company and thought it was another liar. However, after going back and looking through their information carefully, he became interested.
According to the information, their founder and Luo Qixiong, the general manager of Luohua Shipyard, was a former senior engineer at Songjiang Naval Shipyard. He once led a team to build many naval battleships and large armed merchant ships.
Its core shipbuilding technology team also comes from Songjiang Naval Shipyard.
At the same time, the Luohua Shipyard has previously received an unsecured low-interest loan from the Finance Bank, and also received a technology enterprise support title from the Ministry of Industry and Commerce.
This Luohua Shipyard seems to be really something!
After discovering this, Liu Jiaquan did not act rashly. Instead, he asked many friends about the Luohua Shipyard. After several days, he called the people from the Luohua Shipyard over for discussions.
But this time the negotiation was beyond the expectations of the representatives of Luohua Shipyard Company.
They thought that Liu Jiaquan was going to place an order, but they didn't expect that Liu Jiaquan 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, the new shipbuilding industry is robbery while lying down, and Li's Shipbuilding is the best example.
He, Liu Jiaquan, also wanted to lie down and steal money!
