Chapter 868 The Dust Settles
Bolilan spoke a lot of nonsense, but the members of the inspection team did not react at all. Instead, they took notes in their notebooks.
"Mr. Xia Lier, seeing is believing. Next, I will take you to the site for a field investigation. You will naturally be able to see the conditions of Bella City more intuitively."
Afterwards, under Bolilan's arrangement, he took everyone directly to the city center. At this time, many factories had been built in Bella City, but most of them were idle.
"Look, this place is less than one kilometer away from the station. To the left is the Pongkuei River. We can make full use of the water of the Pongkuei River."
Chemical companies are usually built near rivers or the sea because the industry is also water-intensive and comes with serious pollution.
Therefore, later chemical companies gave priority to selecting locations downstream of rivers or at the seaside where emission standards were more relaxed. Of course, there was no strict concept of "pollution" in the 19th century. For example, BASF's headquarters was built on the inland 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. In addition, East Africa is not short of rubber, as it is the world's largest rubber producer. We have also planned a new rubber producing area in the western area of the railway. By then, Mozambique will also become an important rubber producing area in East Africa."
Mozambique, especially the central and northern parts, has abundant rainfall, which, combined with climatic reasons, makes it very suitable for rubber growth. However, after the Matabele Plateau, rainfall begins to decrease due to the influence of the plateau terrain, making it less suitable for rubber growth.
Of course, an important reason why East Africa plans to build a new rubber producing area in Mozambique is that it is closer to the seaport and has large tracts of land suitable for rubber cultivation, making it easier to export.
The application of rubber in the chemical field is very wide. Even rubber products extended from rubber, including tires, rubber pads, etc., add a lot of chemical components, so they belong to the chemical industry. American Goodyear was the first to develop and master the vulcanized rubber technology, which greatly improved the usability of rubber.
In the early 19th century, the early rubber industry emerged in Britain and the United States. However, rubber had a fatal flaw: it was too sensitive to temperature. It would become soft and sticky and have a peculiar smell when the temperature was slightly higher, and it would become brittle and hard when the temperature was lower. This flaw made rubber products have no market, and the early rubber industry fell into crisis without exception.
In January 1839, Goodyear's experiment had a major breakthrough. He accidentally heated rubber, lead oxide and sulfur together and obtained a leather-like substance. This substance did not decompose at higher temperatures like the commonly known elastic rubber.
However, this world-changing technology did not change Goodyear's fate. In 1860, Goodyear died in poverty.
Because the technical threshold for vulcanized rubber is low, most companies directly use its technology, including East Africa. At this time, Goodyear had been dead for more than 30 years. The great development of the rubber industry in East Africa and the world is thanks to this American.
East Africa, in particular, is at the forefront of the development of the automobile industry. Coupled with East Africa's early bets on rubber plantations, East Africa has made considerable profits in the rubber industry.
This is also very important for 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 the large amount of cheap rubber from East Africa entering the German market.
Although the land in Germany is fertile, the main business of the Junker nobles is still based on grain cultivation. After all, the area is small, and the crops available for cultivation are mainly grain crops.
East Africa is far behind Germany in terms of food crop cultivation, especially in the development of mechanization and fertilizer industry. Germany relies on hundreds of thousands of square kilometers of land to feed a population of nearly 50 million, relying on advances in agricultural technology.
Of course, this is related to East Africa’s agricultural development strategy. In recent years, East African agriculture has increasingly shifted towards the cash crop industry.
In the field of commodity grain agriculture, there are too many competitors, including the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Tsarist Russia, all of which are powerful countries in this field.
However, in the field of tropical cash crops, East Africa's only four main competitors are Brazil, small tropical countries in South America, and India. France, with its large number of overseas colonies, can barely be counted as half.
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 commodity grain agriculture.
At the same time, East Africa's land area is far larger than the above-mentioned tropical countries. Even Brazil's area is nearly one-third smaller than East Africa, and Brazil's population is also a flaw. The national population is less than 20 million, about 15 million.
Brazil in the 19th century was not the time when Brazil had vigorously developed its inland areas as in the past. Today, Brazil's population is mainly concentrated in a small area in the southeast. The Amazon rainforest in the north accounts for more than half of the country's area. The development of the inland tropical savannah area is negligible compared with East Africa.
However, the climatic conditions in southeastern Brazil are indeed excellent, with 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, Brazil's colonial master Portugal itself has a small population, so Brazil's current development situation is completely expected.
In other words, without the support of the Far East and Germany, the two regions with the most serious population outflow in the world, it would be impossible for East Africa to develop the African continent in a short period of time.
After the population is formed, the development of East Africa will naturally change with each passing day. Don’t think that most areas of East Africa are basically undeveloped. You should 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 Bolilan, thank you for your introduction. We will truthfully report the specific situation of Bella City to the headquarters. As for the specific results, we still have to wait for the decision of the headquarters." Xia Lilian said politely.
Bolilan naturally knew what Xialiran said, but the purpose of the investigation team was to submit a data analysis report, in which the ideas of the investigation team members were extremely important, and their specific descriptions would definitely be subjective.
So after the preliminary inspection of the city of Bella, the Bella City Government still provided everyone with a full set of considerate services.
Three days later.
The delegation members ended their trip in Beira City, and Bolilan led the city government officials to the dock to see them off in person.
However, Xia Lieran and others kept their mouths shut, and no matter how Bolilan tried to hint at it, they would not utter another word.
In this way, feeling uneasy, Boliland waved goodbye to the members of the BASF delegation. As the cruise ship whistled, Boliland sighed and said, "We have done what we should do. As for the outcome, it is no longer something we can control. Let's go back!"
However, Bolilan's expectations were not in vain. A month later, the East African Central Government officially issued instructions to the Beira Municipal Government, asking it to fully cooperate with BASF in setting up a factory in Beira.
Of course, Beira City does not squeeze out other cities’ places, because Mombasa City has also successfully landed 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 and Nairobi to the west are important cities in the textile industry in East Africa, with excellent infrastructure.
The selection of Beira was entirely a bet made by BASF after it learned about the industrial development in central East Africa. BASF's main business is still textile dyes, and the second largest textile center in East Africa is in Bulawayo, Matabele Province. Therefore, BASF chose Beira as the location of its branch factory, which was actually a case of Xiang Zhuang dancing with a sword, aiming at Pei Gong.
(End of this chapter)
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