Chapter 868 The Dust Has Settled

Boleylan said a lot of nonsense, but the members of the inspection team did not react at all. Instead, they took notes in their notebooks.

"Mr. Xialieran, hearing is false, seeing is true. Next, I will take you to the site for a field investigation, and you will naturally be able to see the conditions of Bella City more intuitively."

Afterwards, under Boleylan's arrangement, he took everyone directly to the city center. At this time, Bella City had built a lot of factories, but most of them were idle.

"Look, this is less than one kilometer away from the station. To the left is the Ponkuei River, and the water of the Ponkuei River can be fully utilized."

Chemical companies are generally built on rivers or seashores, because this industry is also a water-consuming industry, and it is accompanied by serious pollution.

Therefore, in the future, chemical companies will give priority to the downstream areas of rivers or the seashore where emission standards are more relaxed. Of course, there was no strict concept of "pollution" in the 19th century. For example, the main plant of BASF was built on the inland Rhine River.

"The railway can directly transport coal, lead, zinc and other resources from Matabele Province and the central region to Beira City. In addition, East Africa is not short of rubber. It is the world's largest rubber producing area. We have also planned a new rubber producing area in the western area of ​​the railway. At that time, Mozambique will also become an important rubber producing area in East Africa."

Mozambique, especially the central and northern parts, are areas with abundant rainfall. In addition, due to climatic reasons, it is very suitable for rubber growth. On the contrary, after the Matabele Plateau, the rainfall begins to decrease due to the influence of the plateau terrain, so it is not suitable for rubber growth.

Of course, the important reason why East Africa plans a new rubber producing area in Mozambique is that it is closer to the seaport and there are large tracts of land suitable for rubber planting, which is more convenient for export.

The application of rubber in the chemical industry is very wide. Even rubber products extended by 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 availability of rubber.

In the early 19th century, the early rubber industry emerged in Britain and the United States. But rubber has a fatal disadvantage, which is that it is too sensitive to temperature. At a slightly higher temperature, it will become soft and sticky, and have a peculiar smell. At a lower temperature, it will become brittle and hard. This shortcoming made rubber products have no market, and the early rubber industry fell into crisis without exception.

In January 1839, Goodyear's experiment made a major breakthrough. He accidentally heated rubber, lead oxide and sulfur together and obtained a leather-like substance. This substance does 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 of vulcanized rubber is low, most companies directly use its technology, including East Africa. At this time, Goodyear had already died for more than 30 years. The great development of the rubber industry in East Africa and the world is thanks to this American.

Especially East Africa, standing at the cusp of the development of the automobile industry, coupled with East Africa's early bet on rubber planting, made East Africa profitable in the rubber industry.

This is also very important to 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 that cheap rubber from East Africa has entered the German market in large quantities.

Although the land in Germany is fertile, the main business of the Junker nobles is still grain planting. After all, the land is small and the crops that can be selected are mainly grain crops.

East Africa is far inferior to Germany in terms of grain crop planting, especially 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 people in the country, relying on the progress of 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, which are all powerful countries in this field.

However, in the field of tropical cash crops, East Africa's competitors are only Brazil, small tropical countries in South America, and India. These four main competitors, France, which has a 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 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.

In the 19th century, Brazil was not the time when Brazil developed its inland land 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. Compared with East Africa, the development of the inland tropical grassland area is negligible.

However, the climate conditions in southeastern Brazil are indeed superior. It belongs to the 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 sovereign country Portugal itself has a small population, so the current development of Brazil is completely expected.

In other words, if East Africa does not have the support of the Far East and Germany, the two regions with the most serious population outflow in the world, it is impossible to develop the African continent in a short period of time.

After the population took shape, East Africa's development naturally changed at a rapid pace. Don't look at the fact that most of East Africa is basically undeveloped. You must 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 Beliland, thank you for your introduction. We will truthfully introduce the specific situation of Beira City to the headquarters. As for the specific results, we still have to look at the decision of the headquarters." Charlier said politely.

Boliland naturally knew what Xialilian said, but the purpose of the inspection team was to report the data analysis. The opinions of the members of the inspection team were extremely important, and their specific descriptions would definitely be subjective.

Therefore, after the initial inspection of Beira City, the Beira Municipal Government still provided a full set of considerate services to everyone.

Three days later.

The members of the delegation ended their trip in Beira City, and Belilan led city officials to see them off at the dock in person.

However, Xialilian and others had a very strict manner of speaking. No matter how much Belilan made insinuations, he would never say another word.

In this way, in an uneasy mood, Boliland waved goodbye to the members of the BASF inspection team. Amidst the sound of the cruise ship's horn, Boliland sighed: "We have done everything we have to do. As for the result, it is no longer ours." Now that we can control it, let’s go back!”

However, Belilan's expectations were not in vain. One month later, the central government of East Africa officially issued instructions to the Beira Municipal Government to fully cooperate with BASF in setting up a factory in Beira.

Of course, Beira City does not squeeze out the quota of other cities, because Mombasa City has also successfully established 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 itself and Nairobi in the west are important cities in the textile industry in East Africa, with excellent basic conditions.

The selection of the city of Beira is entirely a bet made by BASF after understanding the industrial development situation in central East Africa, because BASF's main business is textile dyes, and the second largest textile industry center in East Africa is in Beira, Matabele Province. Wayo City, so BASF chose Beira City as the location of its branch factory. In fact, Xiangzhuang danced his sword with the intention of Peigong.