Chapter 82 Flour Mill
June.
Bagamoyo Harbour, on the Little Rhine.
Bagamoyo, as the fourth port in East Africa after Dar es Salaam, Mombasa and Tanga, is also the focus of the development of East Africa.
A factory building covering an area of more than 1,000 square meters has sprung up in the Port of Bagamoyo. It is entirely built of brick, stone and concrete structure. The red walls are out of place with the surrounding white Arab buildings.
Its style completely copies the current European architectural style, which is in sharp contrast with the surrounding short Arab houses. Even the local Arab church in Bagamoyo looks a little small in front of it.
A tall chimney protrudes from the ceiling in the middle of the factory building. Billowing black smoke ignites the azure sky of East Africa, and the breath of industry fills the air in East Africa.
The Sultanate of Zanzibar also has some small-scale handicrafts in East Africa, all of which are traditional small workshops, such as blacksmith shops, tailor shops...these traditional handicrafts.
The Bagamoyo Flour Mills is the second recorded modern industry in East Africa that uses large-scale machinery.
The first was the Tanga Sisal Processing Factory which had been in business for a long time and was currently thriving in the market.
But sisal is East Africa's dominant industry, and only Brazil and parts of Southeast Asia can compete with it in the world.
Flour mills are a relatively common industrial industry today, especially in Europe and the United States. There are countless such factories, including small ones that may only have one or two machines.
The Bagamoyo Flour Mill uses steam power, that is, burning boilers. The power source of the boilers is coal developed from the interior of East Africa, which drives the steam turbines to provide uninterrupted and stable power to the equipment in the factory.
All the machines and equipment in the factory are the latest models imported from Germany. They are loaded into ships in the form of spare parts at the German port on the Baltic Sea coast and finally unloaded at the Port of Bagamoyo.
Under the guidance of professional technicians, dozens of machines were installed. These machines are all large and made entirely of metal parts.
The entire workshop is simple and elegant, making cleaning and disinfection convenient.
The lighting system is entirely based on Berlin Electric Company's own technology, and can operate continuously even at night. The generator is an imported Siemens product.
Closely connected to the production workshop is a huge modern warehouse. The climate in the coastal areas of East Africa is relatively humid, which is not conducive to the preservation of food, so the storage requirements for food are higher.
Therefore, the construction of the warehouse fully utilizes the best technology and planning of the current era.
In order to prevent moisture and rats, the ground is completely cast with concrete structure. The drainage system is designed by professionals, taking full account of the local climate environment. At the same time, the warehouse is equipped with various measuring instruments, so workers can check the indoor temperature and humidity at any time and adjust the environment in the warehouse.
The Bagamoyo Flour Mill is an extension of the agricultural industry. With the help of local port conditions, the processed East African colonial wheat can be directly exported in the form of flour.
In addition to the professional technicians employed by the Hechingen Company, the staff who maintain the operation of the machines are mainly immigrants from the Austro-Hungarian Empire with a little education, supplemented by a few Chinese.
However, more Chinese people are needed during the stages of transporting materials, packaging and shipping finished products.
For these Austro-Hungarian and Chinese immigrants, simple training is still required. In addition to health and safety education, they must also be familiar with the operating principles of the machines.
The flour produced by the Bagamoyo Flour Mill will be branded with the Hexingen Company's trademark and sold in Europe.
The products were brought back to Trieste by the returning Hechingen ocean-going trading fleet and sold directly through commercial outlets set up by companies within the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
At the same time, this opportunity can also be used to recruit immigrants. After all, this batch of flour can prove that East Africa has its own products and is not a barren land.
Bagamoyo was once one of the largest slave trade markets in East Africa. With the defeat of the Sultanate of Zanzibar, Bagamoyo was also taken over by the East African colonial government.
The East African colonial government only opened one slave trading market to the Arabs in the port of Dar es Salaam, and the slave trading markets in Mombasa, Bagamoyo and other places were all closed.
As early as the 18th century, Bagamoyo was the most important port in East Africa. At its peak, more than 50,000 indigenous slaves boarded ships from here every year.
Bagamoyo gradually declined as the Sultanate of Zanzibar developed Dar es Salaam. Now the East African colonial government has taken Bagamoyo back to develop it.
After all, there are still too few excellent ports along the entire East African coast. It may seem sufficient now, but with the development of East Africa and the increase in population, port resources will inevitably become precious in the future.
Currently, the factories that can be established in East Africa can only be located in coastal areas, taking advantage of port shipping so that the machines imported from Europe can be put into operation.
As for the inland, forget it for now. The cost of moving these large and clumsy machines to the inland is too high.
Moreover, the machines of this era were relatively expensive. If they were exposed to rain, stuck in mud, or bumped into, they would be difficult to repair under the conditions in East Africa.
As the largest food crop in the current East African colonies, wheat has a considerable annual output, and with the arrival of immigrants and the development of land, its future potential will become even greater.
As for rice, compared to wheat, rice is actually grown in the coastal plains of East Africa, which has the advantage of distance.
However, because Europe's main crop is wheat, after industrialization, the development of agricultural machinery naturally tends to be more focused on European native crops such as wheat.
Even if Ernst wanted to import rice planting and processing machinery from Europe, it would be unlikely. Just like in his previous life, after the development of Japan's industry, it vigorously promoted the advancement of rice planting and processing technology in East Asia, and was the first to realize mechanized production of rice in the Far East.
Therefore, developing wheat is an important step for Ernst to enter the grain processing market. It is simple and easy to operate. In addition, East Africa has a large land area, a large amount of arable land, and the rainfall is suitable for wheat cultivation.
Currently, the wheat-growing area in East African colonies has exceeded the rice-growing area. This is based on the fact that the population in the eastern rice-growing areas is higher than that in the western wheat-growing areas.
Wheat has the obvious advantages of being easy to care for and more drought-resistant, and is very suitable for the tropical savanna climate, especially East Africa, which has obvious plateau characteristics. The temperature is lower than that of the same latitude, and the yield can reach above the average level. Coupled with the advantage of planting area caused by vast land and sparse population, the yield is quite considerable.
Bagamoyo Flour Mills is a food processing enterprise established based on this potential advantage, further extending the agricultural industry chain, improving the level of agricultural industry in the East African colonies, and obtaining higher profits.
(End of this chapter)
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