After dealing with the many trivial matters of the consortium, Wang Yaocheng can finally start his long-planned trip to Africa.
At around nine o'clock in the morning, under the eager eyes of a crowd of people seeing him off, the Boeing 747 special plane took off from the Chek Lap Kok International Airport in Hong Kong and began a journey of more than 40,000 kilometers in Africa.
According to the scheduled flight plan, the special plane will stop at the Emirates International Airport to replenish fuel and water and serve as a one-day short business visit. Then, it will fly directly to Cape Town Airport in South Africa without landing, and its final destination is Guinea-Bissau Airport.
Wang Yaocheng was sitting in the co-pilot seat wearing sunglasses, controlling complex aviation instruments, and talking to the tower through the airborne remote radio station; "Hong Kong's Chek Lap Kok Tower, special flight 1699 took off normally and has climbed to an altitude of 32,000 feet and entered the route.
We will maintain this altitude and sail southeast, with wind speed of 7 knots and gust of 10 knots, completed."
Tower; "Private flight 1699, please maintain the current course and altitude. It is expected to arrive at the Xingdao air traffic control area in 42 minutes. Radio contact 117.63, boss, I wish you a safe journey and see you private flight 1699!"
"Copy that. Goodbye."
Turning the aircraft instrument into autopilot mode, Wang Yaocheng looked out the window at the sea of white clouds stretching infinitely forward like fish scales, extending under the wings into the endless distance. Above his head was a scorching sun and a clear blue sky for thousands of miles.
Magnificent and magnificent.
This magnificent picture between heaven and earth will cause visual fatigue if you look at it for more than ten years.
Wang Yaocheng glanced at it and didn't care. He reached out and took off his earphones and said, "Hey, buddy, I'll leave it to you to take over. Remember to treat our little baby gently. We will have a long flight across continents."
"I understand, His Majesty the King, you come here every time to take over the most challenging jobs, and then leave the most boring jobs to us. Thank you for your thoughtfulness. This is simply the most irresponsible man." Captain Jimmy, a Chinese-American captain
Zhou couldn't help but complained about everything that was wrong, like a resentful woman.
Wang Yaocheng left the co-pilot's seat, looked at the pilot sitting in the back and took over, then lightly patted Jimmy Zhou on the shoulder and said, "Keep up your good attitude, man. When you can't resist, you can try to have fun."
, this is the advice given to you by the best pilot among your employers. After all, I did not get this salary, and now I am acting as a friendly actor."
"Thank you for your advice, but you deprived me of the most exciting and challenging part of the driving pleasure and just left after finishing it. On behalf of the flight crew, I thank you."
"Look, Jimmy, this is your job. For lunch, I will suggest you a Hong Kong rice roll with cheese toast, and a glass of lemon juice to cool down the fire. Enjoy it, man, you have more than a month ahead.
I’ve never had such an authentic airplane meal.”
"Thank you boss, can I have another barbecued pork bun?"
"no."
After joking a few words, Wang Yaocheng left the cockpit with ease, continued along the corridor and passed the stairs leading to the second floor, and arrived at the spacious conference room.
In the conference room of the special plane, more than 20 senior officials accompanying him were having a meeting to discuss work arrangements for the trip to Africa.
Seeing the boss pushing open the door and walking in, everyone hurriedly stood up and said hello one after another: "Boss, good morning."
"Okay, let's all sit down and talk about where the meeting just went!"
Han Jianfeihui, Director of the Secretariat, reported: "Chairman, our meeting has just started. We are introducing to the participants the distribution of resources in Africa and the situation related to domestic political and tribal forces in Guinea, as well as the previous working group that went to Africa to contact relevant parties.
After preparing to discuss the situation, we will work in groups according to the suggestions.”
"Okay, let's go ahead, um...Miss Kayla, give me a glass of French champagne."
Wang Yaocheng sat down comfortably on the exclusive throne at the top of the streamlined long table. This luxurious black-tech seat was handmade by the Rolls-Royce factory, with the royal emblem and English name embroidered with diamonds on the top.
The entire seat is made of giant man-eating crocodile skin that is five meters long and weighs up to 2,100 pounds. There are 1,026 movable parts hidden inside. It has a total of 36 different sitting and lying modes, and provides air bag massage and high-frequency vibration massage.
, temperature adjustment, 21 kinds of fragrances and high-fidelity sound and many other additional functions. One chair is worth 2.6 million US dollars, and there is another one in the private study on the second floor, which can indeed meet the krypton gold requirements of the rich.
Secretary General Han Jianfei cleared his throat and continued to introduce the current situation;
The Simandou Iron Ore Project in Guinea has 2 billion tons of iron ore reserves and excellent open-pit mining conditions. The potential reserves are about 9 billion tons and it can export more than 100 million tons of iron ore every year.
And the iron ore grade is as high as 66% to 68%, which is higher grade than the iron ore deposits of Vale in Brazil, which means a higher premium.
Several of the world's largest mining giants are currently eyeing this piece of fat, including Australia's Rio Tinto, FMG, Brazil's Vale, China Zhongzhi, Chinalco and Israel's BSG Resources, etc. The competition is fierce.
The consortium participated in the competition with the British-registered Red River Resources Company. Red River Resources Company is also the parent company of Australia's FMG Resources Company. It is used to acquire mineral resources around the world and is a parent company that focuses on holding management.
Guinea is an underdeveloped country located on the coast of West Africa with a population of about 10 million. Its territory is bounded by Guinea-Bissau, Senegal and Mali to the north, Cote d'Ivoire to the east, and Sierra Leone and Libya to the south. It is located on the Atlantic coast.
The economy is dominated by agriculture and mining, with a weak industrial base and cannot be self-sufficient in food.
It is rich in natural resources and is known as the "miracle of the address". It has large reserves of aluminum and iron ore and is of high taste. Among them, the proven reserves of aluminum ore rank first in the world. In addition, there are diamonds, gold, copper, uranium, cobalt, lead, zinc, etc.
, and is rich in water conservancy resources. It is the birthplace of the three major rivers in West Africa and is known as the "Water Tower of West Africa".
As a regional hegemon, South Africa has strong political, economic and military influence on Guinea. In addition, as a traditional suzerain country, France has great influence on its upper elites.
The Standard Bank of South Africa and the Owl Mercenary Company, both affiliated to the consortium, mobilized capable manpower to cooperate with the consortium's advance team and entered Guinea six months in advance to start work and achieved remarkable results.
The Owl Mercenary Company has established two forward bases in its capital city of Conakry, employing more than 770 personnel. The southern base can take off and land transport aircraft, and has heavy equipment such as armored vehicles and tanks, maintaining a forward military presence.
The advance team had high-level contacts with both the Guinean government and opposition parties, and the information obtained was encouraging.
The current situation can be said that everything is ready, the only thing left is the east wind, which is real money investment and large-scale infrastructure construction.
Because the Simandou iron ore project goes more than 600 kilometers inland, how to transport the iron ore resources is a big problem. The investment in this alone is as high as 14 billion US dollars, which is a fatal difficulty for many large foreign mining companies.
As a poor and backward least developed country, Guinea's annual GDP is only US$6 billion, with a per capita GDP of US$560.
Except for the capital, other vast rural areas and cities are basically primitive tribal social structures with low productivity and no ability to build and operate railways.
The government can only rely on investors with deep pockets, which is the only requirement of the Guinean government.
relatively speaking
Large foreign mining companies tend to build a railway along the Atlantic coast to Liberia, with a total length of 113 kilometers and a total investment of 2.25 billion US dollars. The transportation and supply conditions are better, which can save a lot of investment.
This railway line leads to the existing railway of ArcelorMittal Group (India). It is cost-effective to export iron ore through the port of neighboring Liberia, which is the most cost-effective business.
This compromise plan takes into account the balance between investment and risk. It is in the interests of investors but not in the interests of the local government of Guinea, and is strongly opposed by it.
Moreover, this compromise plan has a fatal flaw, which is its limited transportation capacity.
ArcelorMittal Group (India)'s existing railways have an average annual transportation capacity of 80 million tons of iron ore. The current production capacity is 36 million tons of iron ore and plans to further increase it to 50 million tons.
Then, the Simandou iron ore project will only have a transportation capacity of 30 million tons.
If we want to further increase production capacity, we have to go back to the original plan, which is to build a dedicated iron ore transportation line. Otherwise, we will not be able to transport the iron ore after production, and everything will be in vain.
As for road freight, it is completely impossible in Guinea, which does not have a qualified road system.
There are mud roads everywhere here, which turn into big mud ponds after it rains. Even vehicles with the most powerful off-road performance have to be blinded. There will be no road left while driving. Everything depends on God's will.
There is a third option;
It is to build a 220km railway to Wasaya, and then build an inland terminal here to transport iron ore along the wide Niger River, but the Niger River flows through southern Sierra Leone and finally leaves the sea in the port city of Freetown in Sierra Leone.
The difficulty of this plan is that the investment is also as high as more than 8 billion US dollars. To build the Wasaya Port and the Freetown Iron Ore Transportation Terminal, it must be able to meet the high requirements of docking 300,000-ton iron ore ships.
Moreover, there is an additional loading and unloading procedure in the middle, which consumes countless manpower and material resources, increases the cost considerably, and is very uneconomical over time.
This is a bulk resource trade worth hundreds of millions of tons. According to the calculation of the largest ship that can pass the Niger River, which is 2,000 tons, 50,000 ships need to be sent out a year to load so much iron ore. For African countries with weak logistics capabilities, it is simply
It's a disaster.
Wang Yaocheng listened to the meeting report and felt a little distracted.
These troublesome matters will naturally be handled by professionals. The consortium has so many employees who are not just for free, so there is no need to save time when it is time to work.
What he was thinking about was the chaotic government situation in Guinea and how to get the most benefit.
According to the current situation of the military government in Guinea, it can be said that there is no food for the dead and corruption is rampant. It is estimated that the rabbit's tail will not grow long!
If you stupidly invest money and pay huge resource taxes to the government, then the current government will fall in a short time. The new government will definitely not recognize the bad things of the previous government, and you will have to pay the unjust money again.
.
So, can the new government last long?
The answer is no.
The political situation in this small West African country is turbulent, and it is not unusual for the government to change several times a year. He has no impression of the political changes in Guinea, which will test his ability to adapt on the spot.