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Chapter 251 Fleet

In addition to Shabot Langming and his entourage, Xu Sheng and more than 20 representatives of Chinese businessmen who have entered Akwa were also invited to the dinner. Xie Sipeng also invited officials such as the Economic and Commercial Counselor of the Embassy in Afghanistan to come and celebrate. Momentum.

After experiencing such a thing today, most people were still in shock. Xie Sipeng was still determined to organize such a dinner, which can be regarded as a remarkable person.

Abacha, as a member of the Kanem Oyo State Council and the Vice Chairman of the Lungta Municipal Council, both he and Shen Ji have relatively prominent status, and of course he was dragged by Xie Sipeng to accompany Shabo Trangming and officials of the embassy; Cao Mo would rather keep a low profile than spend the whole night thinking about how to speak in official terms.

Guo Hongliang, who started a joint venture with fellow villagers to buy a ship in 2003 and runs transportation between Xinhai and West Africa, was also invited to attend.

Although Yang Deshan and Xie Sipeng bought cement from domestic dealers and went to Draculamo for transport on Guo Hongliang's ship, they were blocked from landing in the Atlantic Ocean by Kanem's cement import ban. In the end, they still got the filling equipment from Cao Mo, and the ship It was not abolished, but today was the first time that Cao Mo met Guo Hongliang.

Cao Mo took Xiao Jun and Zhou Han to sit with Guo Hongliang to learn some things about West African shipping.

Guo Hongliang is in his mid-forties and has joined the army in his early years. He has a capable military style. He is quite tall and strong and has a dark complexion, which is why he is nicknamed "Crow".

After he retired from the army as a naval officer, he did not accept the placement and work in the government department. Instead, he joined a group of people from the same village to jointly buy a small freighter for transportation.

Guo Hongliang is also a talkative person. Although he has just met Cao Mo for the first time, he is relatively familiar with Yang Deshan and Xie Sipeng. He knows a little about Cao Mo's affairs and talks to him enthusiastically.

Guo Hongliang accumulated some wealth in his early years, but with the development of the domestic shipping industry, the living space of small freighters became increasingly narrow. It happened that his comrades in the military camp had worked in shipping on the West African route for several years, and they learned that the scale of China-Africa shipping was increasing. It was huge and the demand was strong, so they raised funds and borrowed money to buy an old 30,000-ton ship, which was anchored to the New Ocean Shipping Group to run the West African route.

The distance from Xinhai to the Gulf of Guinea is more than 20,000 kilometers, so the cost of shipping is naturally quite high.

Dongsheng is determined to set up an aluminum profile processing plant in Longta. Kanem’s cheap labor costs are not the main factor. In fact, it is the profiles that occupy a huge amount of the transportation space of bulk ships. The freight per ton is one higher than that of simple aluminum ingots. double.

The reason why Yang Deshan and Xie Sipeng thought about transporting cement to Kanem from China before was mainly because the price of cement in Kanem was extremely high at that time, with a price difference of three to four times compared with domestic prices.

Even though the freight cost is a bit higher than the cost of cement purchased domestically, in theory it is still profitable, so they dared to do that, but they almost lost it completely.

Unlike Xie Sipeng, who is quick-thinking, Guo Hongliang is more focused on running a boat.

High value-added electromechanical engineering equipment and other products have high freight costs, and although the long voyage will be very arduous, the cargo ship has a relatively high utilization rate and can have a stable supply of goods. It can be drifted at sea almost all year round. It takes three or four years to do it. Guo Hongliang had another ship in his hands.

Although the ship invested by Xie Sipeng and Xu Sheng was also affiliated to the Xinhai Shipping Group, it was actually operated with the help of Guo Hongliang's gang and they made some money from it.

management fee.

Regarding the iron ore trade, Guo Hongliang still believes that Xie Sipeng has an element of gambling in it.

But that doesn't mean it can't be done. The main reason is that the ship Xie Sipeng invested in is too small and there is no way to effectively reduce the cost.

Considering the freight cost purely, Guo Hongliang felt that it would take an ore transport ship of more than 150,000 tons to run the West African route to effectively reduce the freight cost of iron ore. This would be a reliable deal.

At present, the country mainly imports iron ore from Australia and Brazil. In addition to the distance being much closer, another point is that the two main ore and ore transportation routes are already dominated by ore ships with a capacity of more than 100,000 tons.

Under such circumstances, no matter how high-quality and cheap the iron ore in West Africa is, the shipping cost will be two or three times higher, and it will be difficult to withstand large fluctuations in domestic iron ore prices in the future.

Another point is that the infrastructure construction in West Africa is lagging behind. Even if they can scrape together money to buy big ships, the iron ore terminal in Pemei Port can barely accommodate a 50,000-ton ore ship; this also directly limits their ability to upgrade ore ships in the future.

space.

With these insurmountable shortcomings, Guo Hongliang always felt that Xie Sipeng's all-out bet on Akwa's iron ore trade was a bit risky.

Cao Mo also had his own intentions when he grabbed Guo Hongliang at the dinner party.

Bulk cement is transported by special vehicles, ships, and storage tanks to terminal distribution points, which has great advantages in cost control and cement quality compared to directly leaving the factory in bags.

At present, Cornero Cement Plant also transports bulk cement directly to distribution points built in Deculamo and Ogun and Oyo states through small and medium-sized special ships. Short-distance water transportation, transportation costs are well controlled, per ton

Cement can squeeze out a lot of profits.

Most countries, major cities and even capitals in West Africa are located along the Gulf of Guinea.

Although the overall economic development of West Africa is still lagging behind, various countries have concentrated their efforts on building one or two coastal central cities, and the scale of infrastructure is still considerable. Cao Mo's next step is to expand the current production and sales model from Lonta-Draculamo to

The entire Gulf of Guinea coastal area.

On the surface, the third phase of the Cornero Cement Plant has not been moved, but the construction of a 10,000-ton dedicated berth, which will take longer to build, is quietly undergoing preliminary construction. To put it bluntly, it is thought that the third phase of the Cornero Cement Plant will be the future.

Surrounding countries along the Gulf of Guinea export finished cement.

The cost of sea transportation within one to two thousand kilometers is much cheaper than road transportation, the distance is not long, and it will not affect the quality of cement.

The Port of Draculamo has specialized cement transport ships. Before the ban on cement imports, three to four million tons of cement from India and Southern Europe entered Canem through the Port of Draculamore every year. Mainly large special ships ran these routes.

These specialized ships, which can easily reach 50,000 tons or 100,000 tons, operate short-distance shipping within the Gulf of Guinea. There are few suitable terminal berths and the loading and unloading costs of secondary connections are too high to reflect the advantages of scale.

The most suitable for cement transportation in the Gulf of Guinea is bulk cement transport ships of about 10,000 tons, but there is no suitable fleet in Draculamo.

While Cao Mo is starting the construction of the third phase of the Cornero Cement Plant, he also needs to increase the capacity of offshore cement transportation.

He does not even need to rush to build the third phase of the Conero Cement Plant for the time being. He can acquire a suitable cement plant in any coastal port city in West Africa and expand the total cement production capacity. However, it also requires an appropriate dedicated fleet to transport the production.

base

Connect with demand markets.

The building materials company is responsible for building such a fleet, so it has no worries about funds, but the subsequent management is actually no simpler than the cement production itself.

However, considering his future industrial layout along the coast of Guinea, the fleet will play a crucial role in the circulation of people and materials, and Cao Mo does not want to completely entrust the relevant business to a third-party shipping company by paying a deposit.

With a person like Guo Hongliang, Cao Mo wondered if it was possible. He would provide the funds, Guo Hongliang would provide the management team, and the two parties would jointly establish a fleet dedicated to transporting goods within the Gulf of Guinea.

Hearing Cao Mo's intention, Guo Hongliang felt embarrassed and told Cao Mo frankly what the difficulty was.

They are currently shipping in West Africa. Although it is hard work, the crew members dock in the New Sea every once in a while and can reunite with their families for a while. If a fleet is formed to specifically operate routes within the Gulf of Guinea, it will be difficult to hire suitable crew members from China.

.

Chabot Langming and the officials from the embassy said goodbye and left after the dinner. Cao Mo and the others stayed in the hotel. Seeing that it was still early and they were not in the mood to play cards, they went to the open-air bar by the beach to continue drinking.

Even though the economic and commercial counselor of the embassy was invited to attend the dinner today, which was enough to give him face, sitting in the open-air bar, Cao Mo could see that Xie Sipeng was still a little depressed. After asking, he learned that even the embassy believed that there was still some work to be done from the port construction.

Peimei Port is lagging behind in shipping iron ore back to China. The shipping cost is too high and it cannot withstand the large fluctuations in iron ore prices, so it has no intention to directly promote this matter.

As a result, Shabot Langming was even less willing to help Xie Sipeng sign a long-term agreement.

You can sign it, but the deposit cannot be reduced by half a cent to ensure that after the iron ore price fluctuates significantly, Xie Sipeng must continue to receive the ore mined by Mangba Iron Mine as agreed, otherwise he will bear all the breach of contract.

responsibility.

"It doesn't matter if this thing can't be done, the situation in Akwa is really confusing. If we really have to make great efforts to promote this thing, then the only thing we can do is take this chance!" Xie Sipeng comforted himself.

Although Chinese businessmen who dare to venture into Africa have psychological expectations for the chaos of local security, and some people have experienced similar experiences to Cao Mo and others when Dracula Mo was robbed at gunpoint, but the robbers mainly robbed money.

If you hand over your belongings with you, there will basically be no worries about your life.

This time, before the gangsters even got close, they fired at the convoy with submachine guns. They wanted to take both money and lives.

Originally, many people were worried about investing in Akwa under the rule of the military government. As a result, not to mention that they did not want to be involved in the iron ore trade. Most people did not even have the intention to invest in the very profitable placer gold mining area.

We went to investigate, and at night we discussed how to return to Kanem in a safer way.

Anyway, I didn’t dare to leave the land port I took when I came here.

Although the police at the scene of the incident did not receive a report, in addition to the two people who were shot dead by the gangsters at the Waka Military Camp at the intersection of the town, they should also have hit or shot and killed three people when they encountered roadblocks.

Four gangsters - Even if many people don't know the real inside story, they are still afraid that if they take this route again when they return to Kanem, they will be targeted for revenge by this group of gangsters.

I thought about organizing this inspection trip with great excitement, but I didn't expect that it would be over as soon as I arrived at Akwa Pemei Port. I also thought that a huge crisis was brewing in Akwa. How could Xie Sipeng be in a better mood?


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