For the current kerosene business of Datang Dynasty, because the supply exceeds demand, the supply quota is more important than other aspects, especially how much supply can be obtained with sales channels such as Xihai Trading Company.
It means how much money can be earned.
This is true whether it is the domestic market or the overseas market that has started in the past one or two years.
Only recently, in order to improve people's livelihood and quell public anger, the empire's top officials have resorted to administrative means to force oil refining companies to prioritize supplying kerosene to the domestic market, which has resulted in even less kerosene available for export.
In the early years, the price of domestic whale oil was very expensive. When kerosene first came out, due to the low production, it also maintained an expensive price. At that time, the public had nothing to say. After all, the sum of whale oil and kerosene would
Their output is generally low.
However, as major newspapers continue to report on oil and kerosene, many people know that oil production has increased significantly, and more kerosene is produced day by day, from 100,000 tons at the beginning to 500,000 tons.
Then to million tons.
According to many people's opinions, such a huge output is actually enough to supply the domestic market.
However, people found it still difficult to buy kerosene. At the same time, the original Royal Oil Company and Imperial Oil Company used a considerable amount of kerosene for export.
Even if you make more money by exporting, people are still unhappy.
Why do you still use it for export when we don’t have enough kerosene?
This means that domestic kerosene supply is still in short supply, resulting in high prices.
So people get angry!
These reactions went up layer by layer, and finally forced the empire's top officials to relax license restrictions on the oil industry, turning the number of oil companies from two to eight at once, stimulating internal competition in the oil industry, and forcing oil companies to develop more
With more oil fields, more kerosene can be refined, thereby lowering domestic kerosene prices.
At the same time, in the name of social responsibility, oil companies are given priority to meet the supply of the domestic market through direct and indirect intervention.
Judging from the actions of the empire's top officials, it is naturally correct. After all, although making money through exports is important, satisfying the supply of the domestic market is more important.
For oil companies, the problem is actually not big, because they are all enterprises directly under the Ministry of State-owned Enterprises or the Royal Assets Division. It does not matter whether they make money or not. What is important is to respond to the call from above and complete various productions.
Task.
Anyway, their kerosene is currently in short supply, and they can still make money whether selling it in the domestic market or exporting it.
However, this will cause greater harm to Xihai Trading Company, a company engaged in kerosene export trade.
If you can't even get the kerosene quota, how can you make money from exports?
However, in order to cultivate foreign markets first, Royal Oil Company and Imperial Oil Company decided to allocate a certain supply of goods to cultivate the market in the Safi region.
When the three parties sat down and signed the relevant contract, Zuo Chengsheng immediately organized the transportation of about one hundred tons of kerosene to the Safi area to open up the local market!
And the result was as good as he expected.
One hundred tons of kerosene is not much. In order to be safe and avoid risks, Zuo Chengsheng hired two ships to transport it separately. After the one hundred tons passed through the West Sea and arrived at the port controlled by the Safi people, it soon
It was just snatched up by local businessmen.
Kerosene is very suitable as lighting oil, and it is not expensive. Not to mention places like the Safavid Dynasty, even in the Tang Empire, where the whaling industry is very developed, whale oil is killed.
fall.
Moreover, there were small businessmen selling kerosene to the Safi area before. Although the amount was not large, they had already made the businessmen of Safi aware of kerosene. Now, as soon as they heard that a large amount of kerosene had arrived, many businessmen came to buy it directly.
, and then transported to various places in Safi for sale.
The market in the Safi area is wide open, making it easier and faster than Zuo Chengsheng expected.
The first batch of 100 tons of kerosene was sold out in a short time. Then Zuo Chengsheng struck while the iron was hot and established an entire kerosene transportation channel from Baku to Safi, and then recruited more retail dealers.
But this time, unlike in the Ottoman region where kerosene was directly wholesaled in large quantities to large distributors, Zuo Chengsheng planned to make the market more detailed. In addition to large distributors, he also found many small distributors, especially
In areas near several ports on the West China Sea, he sells directly to local retailers.
Although this is more troublesome, you can get more profits.
However, this was only limited to the area near the port. As for the inland areas of the Safi region, Zuo Chengsheng was too lazy to do this.
Because this means establishing complete and dense transportation channels and retail channels in indigenous-controlled areas, which means risks and huge costs.
The merchants of the Tang Dynasty these days went to various indigenous-controlled areas to do business. In fact, they did not go deep into the local areas and did not directly contact the local indigenous people.
Instead, they tend to go to upstream channels and are not exposed to the retail link.
Generally speaking, they have the same model. All kinds of goods are purchased from the country and then transported to the overseas territories of the Tang Dynasty or overseas local areas that are relatively close to the indigenous control areas, such as Baku near the Ottoman and Safi Dynasties.
Or it could be the Go River state on the Indian peninsula, or it could be Ceuta, which covers North Africa and Europe.
Large quantities of goods were transported to these overseas territories and some overseas mainland via thousands of tons of ships and ships, and then the trading companies of the Tang Dynasty would disperse and transport these goods to their trading stations and branches in the indigenous-controlled areas.
For example, in areas such as London, Madrid, Constantinople, and then in these indigenous cities, the goods are sold wholesale to local merchants, that is, the next-level channel merchants, and then the indigenous merchants lay out the complete retail terminals for the goods.
.
To put it simply, merchants in the Tang Dynasty generally did not directly face local indigenous consumers and only had contact with local lower-level channel merchants.
Some traders who are less powerful will usually cooperate with large local channel dealers to achieve greater profit margins, while more powerful trading companies will often open branches in more indigenous cities to directly target local retailers.
Although there are strengths and weaknesses, the overall pattern is similar.
The same is true for Xihai Trading Company. In the past, they directly faced the large channel merchants, but now, Zuo Chengsheng is thinking about building more perfect channels to gain more profits.