The Gulf of Guinea Shipping Company has long been insolvent and its operations are difficult to maintain. Cao Mo teamed up with Shen Ji, Abacha, the Felician family, the Blake family, the Brahm family and the Oppenheimer family to inject a total of 3,500 yuan. Ten thousand US dollars, 97% of the shares of the shipping company were taken away at once, leaving only 3% of the personal shares and the position of CEO to Gallon Targaryen, but at the same time, it also used an all-inclusive approach to take over the Gulf of Guinea Shipping The company's debts and a series of other problems have been borne.
Directly integrating the shipping business of the Cornero Cement Plant, the Gulf of Guinea Shipping Company not only owns eight ore ships below 5,000 tons and five special cement transport ships of 3,000 tons, but also owns 30 million USD funds.
Of course, in addition to this, the Gulf of Guinea Shipping Company still owes nearly $6 million in debt on its books.
Cao Mo has had several contacts with Garon Targaryen, and he has a pretty good impression of Garon himself, both intuitively and as the Rupert family has had deep contact with the Gulf of Guinea Shipping Company.
Garon Targaryen worked in Akwa's shipping company when he was young and was quickly promoted to captain. After the Sevi authorities came to power, he moved his family to Kanem and founded the Gulf of Guinea Shipping Company.
In his early forties, he is energetic, has strong business ability and a strong sense of professionalism.
The Gulf of Guinea Shipping Company is now having difficulty maintaining normal operations and is in arrears with huge debts. This has little to do with the strength of Gallon's personal management capabilities. It is mainly directly related to the current situation of Kanem Financial being controlled by Western consortiums.
Garon Targaryen initially founded the Gulf of Guinea Shipping Company, which was mainly developed with funds borrowed from Draculamore Bank, which was controlled by the Western consortium behind the scenes. The loan agreement signed with Draculamore Bank, in addition to extremely high interest rates, Gaowai, there is another very critical clause that cannot be revoked in advance.
In the first few years, the operating efficiency of the Gulf of Guinea Shipping Company was very good, but the loan agreement could not be canceled early. After the capital was accumulated, it was mainly used for fleet expansion, but there was no opportunity to improve the financing structure and reduce the debt level to a reasonable level.
As market competition has intensified in recent years, the high interest payments required every year have directly eaten up increasingly thin profits, leaving the Gulf of Guinea Shipping Company even less able to adjust its business structure.
Even most companies in Kanem cannot escape this fate.
As long as they finance from financial institutions controlled by Western consortiums, in addition to paying high interest every year, they are also subject to irrevocable clauses. When operating conditions are good, they cannot improve their debt structure. Once they encounter a major operating crisis, the debt scale will It will snowball like a snowball and become a profit-making tool for financial institutions, and even lose control.
Among them, Draculamore Power Group is the most typical.
The price of power supply in Draculamore City and surrounding areas is extremely high, but Draculamore Power Group has accumulated billions of dollars in debt owed to Western consortiums over the years, and nearly half of its operating income is used to repay these debts every year. The high interest generated by debt makes it impossible to expand the scale of power generation on a large scale and upgrade the power grid; however, Western consortiums use this debt to continuously devour unimaginable excess profits.
Cao Mo now takes over the Gulf of Guinea Shipping Company, and the accumulated debt of 6 million US dollars owed to Draculamo Bank cannot be paid off in advance, and he has to bear millions of dollars in interest payments every year.
The good thing is that the Gulf of Guinea Shipping Company mainly borrows
The loan will all expire in two years, and you will be able to travel light without having to bear additional costs.
At this time, even if the shipping company does not consider profiting from the upcoming storm in Akwa, it is only for the development of the Gulf of Guinea Shipping Company that it will acquire the 30,000-ton ore ship from Xie Sipeng to improve and enhance its business structure.
, the level of profitability is also extremely necessary.
Xu Sheng didn't know the specific details. He was personally not very willing to sell the ore ship he had high hopes for. However, Xie Sipeng had the absolute say in this matter. There were no twists and turns in the matter. The two parties quickly signed a formal agreement.
At Cao Mo's request, the ore ship was handed over directly at Peimei Port.
Of course, the handover of the ore ship is only the first step in the entire wait-and-see plan. Next, Cao Mo wants the Gulf of Guinea Shipping Company to directly register and establish a branch in Akwa to negotiate coal trade and transportation business.
The Mangba region, adjacent to the gold-producing Ouma region, is a famous iron and coal producing area in Akwa. Due to the economic development level of Akwa, the Mangba region has high-quality iron and coal reserves and large reserves, but its mining capacity is low.
, the annual mining scale of iron ore plants is only about 2.5 million tons, and the mining scale of high-quality coal mines is even less than 5 million tons.
Akwa does not have supporting steel plants and thermal power plants in the country to consume this coal and iron. The mining area is connected to Pemei Port by railway, and the coal and iron produced are mainly used for export, in exchange for precious foreign exchange earnings for Akwa.
In addition to the Draculamo Electric Power Group, the calcining process of the Cornero Cement Plant naturally also requires the use of high-quality coal from Akva.
The local coal resources are extremely rich, but the industrial and transportation foundations of the entire West Africa are weak. The coal consumption cost of transporting coal from the mining area to the cement factory and converting it into each ton of finished cement alone is as high as more than 20 US dollars, which is higher than that in China.
Nearly doubled; with the current production capacity, Cornero Cement Plant needs to consume more than 200,000 tons of high-quality coal every year.
Facing the increasingly weak finished cement market prices in Draculamo and surrounding areas, Cao Mo also wants to maintain the current profit margin. In addition to continuously strengthening the production management of the cement plant, he must also improve the quality of various raw materials directly from the source.
Supply status.
Coal supply, which occupies an important part in various costs, was already within Cao Mo's full consideration.
If a direct coal supply chain can be established between the Port of Peme and the Conero Cement Plant, in the future, the cost of each ton of finished cement produced by the Conero Cement Plant can be reduced by about five or six US dollars. Based on the current annual production capacity
After calculation, the total amount is still very considerable.
After the large-scale berth supporting the Cornero cement plant is completed, the cost of coal transportation can be further reduced, and the profit margin per ton of finished cement can continue to expand.
Of course, there are no large ore ships on hand. Even if we don’t consider transporting Akwa’s iron ore back to the country across a distance of more than 20,000 kilometers for the time being, West Africa does not have some steel production capacity to digest Akwa’s high quality.
iron ore.
Catero, the capital of Oyo State, has the second largest steel plant in Kanem, with an annual output of 300,000 tons of crude steel. It is located on the banks of the middle reaches of the Ogun River.
The Catero Steel Plant was built to raise funds for the military government at the time after Kanem ended colonial rule.
The military government of Kanem at the time wanted to build and develop a large-scale steel production base in Catero relying on the Bosso iron ore in the upper reaches.
On the one hand, due to limited funds, after the first phase of the Catero Steel Plant was completed, it was unable to carry out subsequent construction; the supporting development and construction of the Bosso Iron Mine was also quite limited, and the mining area
The dedicated railway line connecting the steel plant is still on the drawing board. The mined iron ore is transported to the furnace of the steel plant through poor and extremely expensive road transportation.
In China, the cost of road transportation is already quite high. The total cost of fuel, personnel wages, vehicle wear and tear and various tolls is about three to four times that of railways.
In Kanem, due to the worrying state of road traffic and public security, heavy vehicle wear and tear, the need for additional armed security, limited load capacity, slow speed, and low transportation efficiency, the cost of road transportation in Kanem is even higher than in China.
A lot higher.
On the other hand, the grade of Bosso iron ore is slightly lower, only over 30%. Compared with the grade of Mangba iron ore, which is as high as 60%, the refining cost is high.
Combined with poor management, backward technology, and imperfect industrial supporting facilities, the Catero Steel Plant's operating efficiency is very poor.
If Akwa's high-quality iron and coal resources can be directly supplied to the Catero Steel Plant, its current operating conditions can be slightly improved.
However, the links involved behind this are more complicated.
The ore dressing, refining and smelting equipment of the Catero Steel Plant were originally designed specifically for the iron ore mined in the Bosso mining area. Certain technical transformations are required to make full use of the superior performance of the Mangba iron ore.
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The middle reaches of the Ogun River lack supporting large-scale coal and iron terminals, making it difficult to transport iron ore from Akwa on a large scale and at low cost.
Another important reason is that, like most Kanem companies, the poorly managed Catero Steel Plant is also riddled with debts, and behind the many complex debts of the Catero Steel Plant, there are also Western consortiums, which makes its management
The composition of layers is very complex.
Of course, once the conditions for any business are fully mature, you don’t know how many competitors will emerge.
Even if there is a lack of supporting large-scale coal and iron terminals in the middle reaches of the Ogun River, the cost of transporting iron ore with small ore ships of 3,000 to 5,000 tons, covering only more than 400 kilometers of waterways, is still more expensive than transporting iron ore by road from the Boso mining area.
The cost of supplying iron ore to Catero Steel Plant is much lower.
Before the situation in Akwa was stable, Cao Mo would not be in a hurry to invest tens of millions of dollars to build a coal and iron terminal near the Catero Steel Plant. However, Oyo State Governor Blake came out to say hello, and Abacha personally approached him.
After lobbying by relevant high-level officials, Catero Steel Plant soon agreed to accept part of Mangba iron ore on a small scale, try to mix it with Bosso iron ore in the refining process, and then put it into the furnace for smelting.
Cao Mo has laid a certain foundation in Oyo State, and has formed an alliance with the Oppenheimer family and the Rupert family. Whether it is coal or iron, they are in the southwest coastal area of Kanaim to open up the downstream demand market.
The difficulty lies in the upstream supply, which is also the focus of his entire "wait and see plan".
Even though Cao Mo didn't want to see the situation in Akwa become violently turbulent, even if Brahm, Gallon and Juan Mantar, who led the Akwa Democratic Promotion Front, and others successfully connected, before the situation was unclear, in the capital
It was impossible for him to directly expose Uverbonya's plot before he found out whether there were other accomplices or powerful supporters behind him.
At the same time, he was also worried that the top leaders of the Democratic Promotion Front were not politically mature enough and would lose their composure after learning the relevant secrets. Cao Mo did not even let Bram and Garon Targaryen rush to inform Hu of the relevant information.