Dangtu Machinery Company began to produce steam engines on a small scale and took the lead in practical applications in Chizhou Coal Mining Company, which had a great impact.
Da Chu Di newspapers carried relevant reports on this news and called it a 'historic moment'.
After all, this is the first industrial application of the steam engine in more than ten years of research and invention, and its historical significance is very great.
This news, coupled with the news related to steam engines that had been reported one after another, also made more people, even ordinary people, aware of the news about steam engines.
As for the spread of steam engines in the industrial world, it is even more popular. Not only coal mining companies are extremely concerned about it, but even some ordinary companies are also extremely concerned about it.
Among them is Suqin Textile Company.
As the leading enterprise in the textile industry in the Great Chu Empire, Su Qin Textile Company is not only large in scale, but also attaches great importance to technology. In the past ten years, Su Qin Textile Company has successively participated in many textile enterprises through direct investment, shareholding, self-research, etc. Industry-related technology research and development.
In addition to some technical research and development in the textile industry itself, they also pay great attention to related industries, especially the machinery manufacturing industry.
Various types of textile machines are their focus. For this reason, they have maintained a long-term strategic cooperative relationship with Hantian Machinery Company, a textile machine R&D and production enterprise in the empire.
The basic model is that Suqin Textile Company provides part of the R&D funds or pre-purchase contracts, and Hantian Machinery Company is responsible for technology R&D and production, and then shares the R&D results.
One of the most typical successful cooperation cases is mule machine!
The mule machine is a new type of spinning machine that combines the advantages of a handloom and a water-powered spinning machine.
Hand spinning machines have been used on a large scale since the Chu Empire was still entrenched in Huguang. The characteristic is that they still use human power. Depending on the model, the spinning efficiency is several times or even ten times higher than that of the old spinning machines.
Not long after the new hand-spinning machine was successfully developed, Hantian Machinery Company followed the trend and developed a hydrodynamic spinning machine.
The hydrodynamic spinning machine can spin more cotton threads at one time, greatly improving production efficiency.
However, due to technical limitations of these hydrodynamic spinning machines, the cotton threads spun are relatively thick and hard, and the cloths woven are also coarse cloths, and the quality can only be said to be average.
Of course, although the quality is average, the advantage is that the cost is extremely low and the output is huge. What's more, in these days, there is a huge market for even coarse cloth... Not everyone can afford to wear fine fabric clothes, most of them The daily wear of ordinary people is still mainly made of coarse cloth.
The hydrodynamic spinning machine and the subsequent hydrodynamic loom set off a wave of large-scale mechanized production in the Chu Empire, which then swept the country and even covered most of Asia.
Su Qin Textile Company is the second player in this wave and has grown rapidly. It has become the second largest textile company in the country and continues to compete with Hantian Textile Company for the title of the largest textile company in the country.
In order to further expand the market and defeat Hantian Textile Company in the competition, they entered into strategic cooperation with Hantian Machinery Company. Both parties jointly funded the research and development of new hydrodynamic spinning machines in order to develop new hydrodynamic spinning machines that can spin fine cotton yarns. machine.
After several years of research and development, the mule machine was finally successfully developed in the twelfth year of Chengshun.
As a result, Suqin Textile Company was able to directly produce fine cloth using water power, seizing the mid-to-high-end market where hand-spun looms were still used in the past.
This also completely kicked off the wave of the Chu Empire's textile industry turning to mechanized production.
Twelve years ago in Chengshun, the cotton spinning industry actually paid equal attention to mechanical spinning and hand spinning. Hydro-powered mechanical spinning mainly produced cheap low-end coarse cloth, while hand spinning mainly produced mid-to-high-end fine cloth.
However, twelve years after Chengshun, the emergence of the mule machine enabled water-powered mechanical equipment to produce fine cloth. The cost of mechanical production was far lower than that of manual production. In the following years, large-scale hand-woven textiles in the Chu Empire The industry gradually withdrew from the market, and one after another large-scale textile factories emerged.
However, there are still a large number of family workshops and rural areas. Many farmers don't care whether the price of your machine-made fabrics is expensive... People just take some time off from their busy schedule, make a little bit a day, grow their own cotton, and then spin and weave the fabrics for their own use. The production efficiency is lower. It doesn’t matter to people.
Therefore, even though the textile industry in the Great Chu Empire was already very large, with numerous factories, there were still a large number of men farming and women weaving in the vast rural areas, and they did not have the habit of buying machine-made fabrics.
But it doesn't matter, it's the same for them to buy textile machines... Even if they don't buy textile machines, they can even buy parts for building new textile machines.
What? You said you can make your own damn parts... With this technology, you can just farm a field, and you can make a lot of money by just opening a small workshop. Or even if you work as a technician in one of those big projects, you can make a lot of money. .
Therefore, even though men farming and women weaving in rural areas do not seem to participate in the market, they actually participate in the market, but in an indirect way, and the textile industry does not directly benefit.
However, even so, the textile market brought by the huge urban population and some wealthy peasant families was extremely huge, which in turn gave birth to the huge textile industry of the Chu Empire.
As of now, there are more than 500 mule machine factories in the Dachu Empire, and this is only five years after the invention and application of the mule machine. We are only talking about medium and large mule machine factories.
As for those small spinning factories or family workshops with only a few mule machines, they are not included in the statistics... because there are too many and it is difficult to count at all.
Most of the medium and large mule machine factories are actually improved from the original water-powered spinning mills, and there are not many purely new ones.
However, the number of mule machine factories is still increasing at an extremely rapid rate. I am afraid that within a few years, the number of mule machine factories will exceed 1,000.
This is extremely scary data.
In addition to the mule machine factory, there are also supporting weaving factories, printing and dyeing factories. After all, the mule machine factory produces cotton yarn, and before the cotton yarn can be turned into cloth, it still needs to go through the weaving process. At this time, the cloth is just pure white cloth. .
To enter the market, it needs to be dyed, and some cloths will also be dyed with patterns to meet different needs in the market.
Various cotton spinning factories, including spinning mills, weaving factories, printing and dyeing factories, and a small number of garment factories (mainly producing uniforms for special industries, such as work clothes, military uniforms, and various types of tents, etc.), all added up, Regardless of whether they are advanced or backward, overall, there are thousands of cotton spinning factories with more than fifty employees.
As for cotton spinning factories or family workshops with less than 50 employees... it is even more difficult to count, because many of them still exist in the form of family workshops and still use new hand-made spinning machines and looms.
This is why the cotton cloth of the Da Chu Empire was able to be exported on a large scale and seize overseas markets strongly, even causing resistance from local indigenous people.
The output is terrifying, and the cost is extremely cheap.
Taken together, for the textile industry of those indigenous countries that are still stuck in primitive hand-weaving, it is a cross-latitude blow. Normal market competition cannot compete with the cloth of the Great Chu Empire.
This is why a large number of indigenous countries have unanimously chosen to use administrative means to ban the entry of cloth from the Chu Empire in order to protect their fragile handmade textile industry.
This in turn caused a war with the Chu Empire.
A large part of the reasons for the series of wars in Nanyang and the numerous conflicts between the Chu Empire and the local indigenous people in India are due to this.
This is why the Chu Empire has been shouting "free trade".
Because the free trade of the Chu Empire is actually unilateral free trade. If other countries really follow the Chu Empire to engage in free trade, then the trade between both parties will basically be a deficit, and a large amount of wealth and resources will be used by the Chu Empire at various low prices. harvest of industrial products.
In the wave of great development of the Chu Empire's textile industry, Su Qin Textile Company has always been a leader. They have more than 30 comprehensive textile factories across the country.
These textile factories are comprehensive factories integrating spinning, weaving, printing and dyeing.
These factories are located in every important area across the country. Even in Chang'an, Shaanxi Province, there is a branch of Suqin Textile Company, which has a bunch of local factories. However, in addition to cotton spinning, the local factories are mainly engaged in wool spinning.
The Shaanxi-Gansu region has a large amount of wool resources, and Chang'an, as the political and economic center of the empire in the northwest region, also has a relatively good industrial foundation and supporting facilities, so Su Qin Textile Company has also set up a branch here, focusing on wool spinning and cotton spinning.
Suqin Textile Company, which owns many factories, has a market share of about 10% in the domestic cotton spinning industry.
But don’t think this data is small!
In fact, this is very exaggerated. You must know that the textile industry is actually very fragmented. Because the entry threshold for the cotton spinning industry is not high, there are so many domestic textile companies or textile family workshops.
The high transportation costs also make it difficult for the products of large companies to enter distant markets, especially in places where water transportation is impassable. It is often difficult to enter products with low gross profit margins produced by some large companies.
Because after adding in shipping costs, they cannot compete with the products of local small factories in terms of cost.
Of course, products with high entry barriers, high technical difficulty, and high added value are not included in this list.
Under such circumstances, it is quite difficult for Su Qin Textile Company to seize about 10% of the domestic market. This is possible because they have set up factories in almost every province in the country and adopt local production and on-site manufacturing methods. local sales strategy.
If we only produce cloth in Suzhou, or even in the Jiangnan area, it is impossible to buy Suqin cloth all over the country, and the freight will be unbearable.
However, even though Su Qin Textile Company has spread across the country, its business center is still in Jiangnan.
This is not only the place where they started, but also because the Jiangnan region is the most populous and economically important province in the Chu Empire.
The entire Pan-Jiangnan region accounts for almost half of the empire's economic output.
Those who win Jiangnan will win the world, this is not an empty talk.
However, competition among various industries in the Jiangnan region is also the most intense, and the cotton spinning industry is no exception.
Under such circumstances, Suqin Textile Company has never dared to relax its investment in technology research and development, and it is always paying attention to the emergence of various new technologies.
The birth of the steam engine was also closely followed by Su Qin Textile Company.
Steam engines are nothing new to the senior executives of Su Qin Textile Company. In fact, they have learned about the existence of steam engines more than ten years ago, and some senior executives have even visited the Royal Institute of Technology to visit steam engines.
However, steam engines in the early years were basically of no practical use value. Not to mention ordinary industries, even the coal mining industry despised them... People would rather carry water by hand than have those primitive steam engines.
After seeing steam engines in the early years, the senior executives of Su Qin Textile Company came to the conclusion that it was still early for steam engines... But now that steam engines have finally successfully entered industrial applications, Su Qin Textile Company has to pay attention again.
We also sent technical experts to Dangtu Machinery Company for a visit!
Then the inspection results of Su Qin Textile Company were very pessimistic.
Can a steam engine be used?
It will definitely work. Today's steam engine models are relatively stable and reliable, with large and small horsepower, including a moderate 16-horsepower model and a larger 32-horsepower model.
If you want something with more horsepower, Dangtu Machinery Company can also do it.
In terms of performance, today's steam engines are fully worthy of practical application. The only problem is that they are too expensive.
The purchase cost of a sixteen-horsepower steam engine is four to five thousand Chu Yuan... while the same horsepower of water-powered equipment only costs a few hundred Chu Yuan... The price difference is too big.
The later use and maintenance costs are higher.
Hydraulic equipment costs nothing to use. After all, water is free... but steam engines need to burn coal, and coal is not cheap.
Maintenance is also true. The structure of hydropower equipment is simple. Although some wooden structures need to be replaced frequently, replacement is easy and the cost is low. The steam engine is a big thing, and it is also a big thing with very advanced technology. It is not easy to maintain. Replacing equipment It’s not easy either…even the replacement equipment isn’t cheap.
Taken together, the purchase, use, and maintenance costs of steam engines far exceed those of hydropower equipment... This is not a difference of one or two times, but a gap of more than ten times.
Su Qin Textile Company calculated... and stopped thinking about purchasing steam engines.
If they really used steam engines to produce cloth, they would be at a loss.
Just because you can't use it now doesn't mean you can't use it in the future.
After all, technology will continue to develop, and the reason why steam engines are now expensive is that a large part of the cost is due to the high cost of early research and development and production line construction. Early steam engines need to dilute these costs, so that the price is extremely high.
But steam engines are sure to get cheaper as time goes by.
At the same time, the price of coal will continue to decline as production increases.
In the future, the cotton spinning industry will definitely be able to use steam engines, and Suqin Textile Company has always been a company that is very interested in new technologies and is willing to spend money for it.
Even though steam engines are of little use to the cotton spinning industry now, they still signed a cooperation agreement with Dangtu Machinery Company to jointly develop low-cost steam engines for the textile industry.
This is the consistent method of Su Qin Textile Company... No matter whether it is useful or not, and no matter when it can be used, invest money as long as there is hope.
Once you invest money and achieve results, you can profit from the R&D results.
The most important thing is to be able to monopolize the new products in the early stage. Just like the mule machine back then, within a year of the invention of the mule machine, Su Qin Textile Company was basically the only company that owned it, because they used the R&D contract signed that year to monopolize Hantian for one year. Machinery company mule machine production capacity.
This has given Su Qin Textile Company a great first-mover advantage in market competition.
Su Qin Textile Company also wants to do it again with low-cost steam engines. They have no control over other industries, but in the textile industry, especially the cotton spinning industry, Su Qin Textile Company must be the first factory to use low-cost steam engines.
As for non-low-cost steam engines... whoever wants to use them can use them!
Anyway, according to the improvement route prediction given by Dangtu Machinery Company and Su Qin Textile Company's own judgment, if steam engines are to be applied in the cotton spinning industry and make the factory profitable without losing money, it will take ten years for a few!
The textile industry can't afford steam engines for the time being, but that doesn't mean other industries can't afford them either. Needless to say, in the coal industry, self-produced coal naturally has the advantage of low cost.
The cost of coal is almost nothing to them...
And other mining companies are also very interested!
Although other mining companies also need to purchase coal and have relatively high coal usage costs, mining companies have a hard demand for steam engines.
It’s not just coal mines that need to pump water, many iron ore and other mineral mines also need to pump water.
No, after seeing the coal mining industry take the lead in using steam engines, other industries could not sit still. The iron ore industry was the first to make up its mind.
Dangtu Steel Company is close to the waterfront, and they are right next to Dangtu Machinery Company. They have also become the first steel company in the iron ore industry to purchase steam engine applications.
After Dangtu Steel Company, there is Daye Steel Company. This steel company is a comprehensive steel enterprise integrating mining and smelting. Well, it also produces some additional products, such as copper, silver and other metals.
At that time, Daye Iron and Steel Company was still the largest steel company in the Dachu Empire. It had made huge profits in the past few years by relying on the Daye Steel Smelting Method, and there was no shortage of money at all.
I ordered more than a dozen steam engines in one go!
The purchase cost of a steam engine, which is only tens of thousands of dollars, is just a small amount of money for Daye Iron and Steel Company.
In addition to the mining industry, some special machinery companies have also set their sights on steam engines, and Zhenjiang Heavy Machinery Company is one of them.
Zhenjiang Heavy Machinery Company, their main products are relatively large equipment or parts, and it is also the largest large equipment factory in the empire.
They produce a large number of large iron parts used in the navy's iron-ribbed wooden hull ships, and some large lifting equipment are also their specialty.
Their large-scale equipment is widely used in various industries, especially port hoisting, shipbuilding, smelting and other industries.
The production of these large-scale equipment requires relatively high stability and reliability of the power source. More importantly, the power requirements are also very high.
If the power is too small, it will be impossible to process those large parts.
Although hydropower can also be used, it has some limitations. In order to maintain the stability of hydropower, they spend a lot of money every year to maintain and even invest in the construction of hydropower facilities and equipment such as aqueducts, dams, and turbines. It costs a lot of money.
Even so, the stability of the hydrodynamic force is not good, mainly because in order to obtain sufficient power, a sufficient amount of water needs to be continued to create a large enough hydrodynamic potential energy.
This means that it often takes a long time to store water before production can be carried out, and the continuous production time is also relatively short, which greatly limits the production of Zhenjiang Heavy Machinery Company.
In addition, their products have high added value and they are willing to spend a lot of money to improve their production lines, so they are also eyeing steam engines.
It's just that what they want is not the small sixteen-horsepower or thirty-two-horsepower machines used in mines today. What they want is a large steam engine with a power of seventy, eighty or even hundreds of horses.
So when they approached Dangtu Machinery Company to purchase such a large steam engine, Dangtu Machinery Company also looked embarrassed.
To be honest, in the past half year, Dangtu Machinery Company has focused its main energy on how to reduce the manufacturing cost of steam engines, and its main research and development has also focused on the sixteen-horsepower model. Even the thirty-two They invested relatively little in the horsepower of steam engines.
Because according to feedback from various mining companies, mainly coal mining companies, their demand is for a steam engine of this level. It’s not that they don’t want more horsepower, but it’s too expensive and unnecessary.
Although other industries have demand for high-horsepower steam engines, the total demand is relatively small. The demand is small and the market is small. Therefore, during the critical period of steam engine development, they can no longer take care of these high-horsepower steam engines.
After failing to purchase from Dangtu Machinery Company, Zhenjiang Heavy Machinery Company found Tianjin Machinery Company, and here they found what they wanted.
They can build steam engines with hundreds of horsepower!
Tianjin Machinery Company, although they have also focused their technical research on small and medium-sized steam engines, their research on large steam engines has not fallen behind.
Although the total demand for large steam engines is small, the unit price is expensive and competition is not that great.
Unlike a steam engine with more than ten horsepower, the three major steam engine companies are all working on it, and they have invested a lot of money to develop it. You can tell with your toes that the competitive pressure will be very high.
So they plan to walk on two feet, while building small and medium-sized steam engines with more than ten horsepower, and at the same time investing resources in building large steam engines.
The only problem is that Tianjin Machinery Company has not yet produced a prototype, so we have to wait, and the price is extremely expensive!
(End of chapter)
