Chapter 373
Ji Wanmei and Zhu Shuangyan retrieved all the financial approval records from the past two years that were archived in the archives of the Foreign Sales Department.
From afternoon to evening, the two of them didn't even have time to rest or eat. Finally, around 8 p.m., they found the abnormal expense reports for the past two months.
"Meimei, look at this." Zhu Shuangyan picked out a few sheets from a large stack of papers, her expression slightly serious.
“On this expense report, there are two raw materials called ‘diethylene glycol butyl ether’ and ‘1,2-propanediol’, each with an approved purchase amount exceeding 100,000 yuan. Moreover, these purchases were submitted several times over the past three months.”
Ji Wanmei frowned, sensing something unusual. There must be something fishy about the procurement of expensive raw materials in such a concentrated period.
"Let me see, when did this happen?" Ji Wanmei took the forms and examined them closely.
“At the end of the year before last,” Zhu Shuangyan said, glancing at the signature of the finance manager below. “At that time, I should have just joined the export sales department and hadn’t yet become the head of the approval department. These approval forms didn’t go through my hands.”
Ji Wanmei calculated the time.
At the end of the year before last, when Yang Zhiping had just connected with the representatives of those two foreign companies in Guangzhou.
And coincidentally, at this time, the factory's purchasing department approved several purchase orders for expensive raw materials.
These items did not come from the factory's original raw material suppliers; they were definitely sourced separately by Yang Zhiping.
Ji Wanmei carefully studied the composition of the two materials.
Although she wasn't a chemistry major, she had taken chemistry courses and after reading it, she roughly figured out that 'diethylene glycol butyl ether' was an organic mixture that could be miscible with water in any proportion.
It is soluble in ethanol, ether, and other oily organic solvents, and is an essential chemical intermediate used in the miscibility of synthetic agents such as nitrocellulose, varnish, paintbrushes, resins, and plastics.
'1,2-Propanediol' is also an organic compound that is miscible with water and ethanol. In its common state, it is a colorless mixture with almost no taste. It is fine, stable, and has a slightly sweet taste. It is most commonly used in cosmetics, toothpaste, soap, hair dye, cellophane, and pharmaceutical industries.
Dongfang Factory is a daily chemical factory.
Purchasing these raw materials is within the normal range.
However, there is a problem with purchasing such a large quantity of expensive imported raw materials separately, without combining them with other raw materials needed for production.
Moreover, plastic melt adhesives and chemical cosmetics have not yet been widely adopted in the production lines of the Dongfang factory.
The original large production workshops mainly produced textiles, enamelware, and hard plastic products.
Before the introduction of sol-gel plastics and cosmetic chemicals, a large quantity of raw materials had already been purchased here in advance.
The underlying motivation for this action is simply two points.
Alternatively, Yang Zhiping may have carefully crafted this pretext to make money and thus circumvent the factory's approval process.
Alternatively, the Yang family father and son may have started planning and laying the groundwork two years ago, paving the way for these two industrial lines.
However, Ji Wanmei is more inclined to believe that Yang Zhiping was the one who wanted to make money first, and happened to meet an American foreign businessman in Guangzhou, which gave him access to the supply channels and product resources. So he used this as an excuse to make a fortune.
When the higher authorities issued the document this year, the father and son received the news and, without hesitation, decided to join forces with the two foreign business representatives to carry out another scam and trap.
Using foreign technology and equipment as bait, and foreign investment as a condition, they persuaded Ji Xingguo to believe that this matter could be accomplished.
In her past life, Ji Wanmei remembered that after the Yang family father and son took over the factory, they immediately reduced the workforce by half. Then they began to convert the daily chemical factory into two main product production lines.
One production line continued to produce daily chemical and general merchandise products, but it had shifted towards sol-gel plastic products. Initially, this technology was relatively uncommon in the market and was quite popular.
However, less than two years later, sol technology began to become more widespread and popularized, and sol products suddenly became cheap, with extremely low profit margins.
On the other hand, Yang Zhiping was ambitious and wanted to establish his own cosmetics brand in the factory. He started making chemical cosmetics such as shampoo, soap, hair dye, and face cream, hoping to compete with export goods.
At that time, there were very few domestic brands that could produce good products and compete with imported cosmetics.
Yang Zhiping saw the market opportunities in Guangzhou, and realized that few factories in inland cities were doing this. So, after acquiring the factory, he started to modify the production line.
However, he himself was an outsider in this field, and the factory did not have any real product development experts with technical expertise.
Cosmetic chemicals are not exactly the forte of daily chemical and department store manufacturers.
It's like someone who's an artist suddenly switching careers to sports; they're not even in the same league.
But Yang Zhiping was arrogant and thought he could do it.
He also thought that money was easy to make in the market and that ordinary people were easy to fool.
After opening a chemical cosmetics line, they basically bought the raw materials themselves and copied the formulas of imported shampoos, hair dyes, and face creams one-to-one.
But are they really that stupid?
Do you really think the real core technology and formula ingredients will be listed on the ingredient list so you can copy them?
Otherwise, what's the point of patents?
The consequence of blindly imitating others is—
Soon after those products were launched, feedback was received that consumers experienced varying degrees of skin ulceration, hair loss, rashes, and other symptoms after using them.
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