In November of the thirty-seventh year of Chengshun, the Songjiang Naval Shipyard in Songjiang Prefecture was the most technologically advanced and largest large-scale shipyard in the Chu Empire. It undertook one-third of the large-scale main battleship construction orders for the Chu Empire Navy.

In the factory, a group of unusual people were welcomed.

It is not the warship-related officers of the Navy Military and Political Department, nor the senior executives of domestic shipping companies, but the Dachu Empire Animal Husbandry Corporation, which seems to have nothing to do with the shipping industry and is not even very familiar to the outside world.

Just by looking at the name, you can tell that it is a policy enterprise directly under the imperial cabinet, because only large enterprises directly under the cabinet can use the country name prefix Da Chu Empire. At the same time, only policy enterprises can directly use a certain industry in the company name.

The ranking is used as the company name.

Such as the Railway Corporation, the Grain Corporation, and the Salt Corporation.

Ordinary enterprises, even very large government-run enterprises, cannot use these specific terms in most cases, such as the largest government-run bank in the Dachu Empire, the financial bank directly managed by the Ministry of Finance, and the domestic savings bank.

Of course, in any county-level area with imperial administrative agencies, there will be a financial bank.

Even for them, they cannot use the prefix Da Chu Empire in their corporate name, and it is even less possible to directly use the corporate name of the bank and directly change it to a corporate name such as "Da Chu Imperial Bank Corporation".

There are many other very large enterprises directly under the Ministry of Industry, which are similar. Although they are large in scale and have great influence, none of them uses the prefix of the Da Chu Empire, nor does they directly use industry as the name of the enterprise.

However, the Dachu Empire Animal Husbandry Corporation is able to use these words because this company is highly similar to the Dachu Empire Grain Corporation in terms of function and nature.

The company was established in the 12th year of Chengshun and mainly operates large-scale government-run horse farms, cattle farms and other types of pastures, livestock transportation and sales.

Ensure the supply of horses, cattle, and meat needed by the military and civilians, stabilize livestock prices, develop the livestock industry, and cultivate and breed better horses for military and civilian use.

Just by looking at this series of tasks, you can know the importance of this head office to the Chu Empire.

It can even be said that this head office was an important guarantee for the Chu Empire's military horse administration, civilian horse farming, cattle farming, meat supply, and wool supply.

After the Chu Empire successively controlled Liaohetao, Monan, Mobei, Moxi and other areas, the Animal Husbandry Corporation also established many very large ranches above.

The three famous horse breeds, Liaoxi horse, Hexi horse and Fengzhou horse, are all bred by various ranch branches under the National Animal Husbandry Corporation.

However, this company has little reputation in the outside world. Many people in China do not even know that such a huge animal husbandry company exists. People are more familiar with the series of ranch subsidiaries under this company.

For example, Liaohe Racecourse Company, which operates the Liaohetao government-run racecourse, and Jeju Racecourse Company, which operates the Jeju Island government-run racecourse...

But this company is a serious, third-level enterprise directly under the cabinet, and its level is even equivalent to that of the Animal Husbandry Department under the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry.

The reason why this company appeared in the Songjiang Prefecture Naval Shipyard was naturally not to play around... but to examine the strength of the Songjiang Prefecture Naval Shipyard, focusing on the refrigerated transport ships built by the shipyard for the navy.

After the group was taken to a dry dock, the supervisor of the naval shipyard personally explained to them:

"The supply ship No. 246 in front of us is a special refrigerated supply ship designed and built for the Navy and specially used to transport fresh meat, fruits, vegetables and other foods."

"The entire ship is made of steel, uses a high-power steam engine, and uses sails. It can carry 2,300 tons of fresh food at a time for ultra-long-distance ocean voyages!"

"In order to ensure that the food does not spoil during transportation, we installed a Bell Company freezer that uses compressed air refrigeration for refrigeration."

"By the way, in addition to this specialized frozen supply ship, we have also introduced this kind of freezer on the new generation of warships to provide better preservation conditions for fresh food on board!"

"This Bell freezer can be said to have solved a lot of our troubles."

In addition, a middle-aged man in business attire in the crowd also continued the conversation with a smile: "Freezers were the inspiration when we were studying air compressors. In fact, our company used to mainly make air compressors.

, but after discovering that the compressed air process can be used for cooling, we began to turn to the research of refrigerators, and officially launched the first generation of refrigerator products three years ago."

"After three years of continuous efforts, our refrigeration machines have developed into various models. Marine refrigeration machines have begun to be used in batches on naval battleships and new ocean liners. At the same time, we have developed vehicle-mounted refrigeration machines specially for train transportation.

The machine has also been a success, Jiangnan Railway Company has ordered the first batch of on-board refrigeration machines from us, and we are also actively developing and promoting household refrigeration machines."

"In the emerging field of freezers, we have enough confidence to provide customers with the best products!"

The representatives of the Animal Husbandry Corporation on the side nodded slightly after hearing this. In fact, before they came to the shipyard for inspection, they had already visited the Bell Refrigeration Company in Beicheng District, Songjiang.

I have to say that this new gadget, which has just appeared less than three years ago, is really shocking. Although it can be seen that there are still many problems in the freezer. For example, the energy consumption problem is very serious, and it needs to be powerful and powerful.

Continuous power to power the compressor.

To be honest, the requirements for the steam unit that provides power are very stringent, which means that a more excellent and more expensive steam engine is needed to provide power... It is impossible for the steam engine to run for a few days and then malfunction and be unable to provide power.

Will it continue to cool?

The technology of the compressor itself is more complex and has higher process requirements.

Air compressors are not a new thing. The Chu Empire had already applied them in the industrial field more than ten years ago, and later introduced air compressors to the train field, and then developed a new type of unified compressed air system for trains.

dynamic system.

However, these air compressors are not required to run continuously for a long time, and the performance requirements are not too high.

But the compressor required for refrigeration is different, and the process requirements are very strict. With the current industrial technology of the Dachu Empire, this thing is possible... but it is expensive!

This has led to the fact that the application of new technology products such as refrigerators has very large limitations. So far, it has only been applied in the field of ships, and the number of applications is actually very small.

Because this thing is too expensive, the purchase cost is expensive, and the use cost is also expensive... At the same time, it is not very stable and efficient. In order to ensure the cooling effect, two sets of freezers must be prepared for cross-replacement for maintenance.

Avoid malfunctions.

Therefore, so far, only battleships and luxury passenger ships that are huge in tonnage, expensive, not short of money, and don't care about the extra cost use this new gadget.

The effect is good, and the navy does have a very urgent need for the ocean supply of fresh food. In addition, no matter how poor the navy is, it can't afford hundreds of thousands, so it specially built such a frozen supply ship.

Ocean fleets used on missions to transport fresh food.

But in the civilian field, only luxury ocean liners that pursue ultimate luxury without considering cost use this thing.

Today, people from Bell Refrigeration Company actually pay more attention to the inspection by representatives of the Animal Husbandry Corporation than people from Songjiang Naval Shipyard.

As long as they can convince the representatives of the Animal Husbandry Corporation and win the freezer order from the Animal Husbandry Corporation, then their Bell Refrigeration Company can truly step out of the niche and become popular.

Because people from the Renjia Animal Husbandry Corporation had already expressed their intention before coming: the Animal Husbandry Corporation needs a large number of refrigerated transport ships to transport meat back to the country from overseas.

This requires not one or two refrigerated transport ships, but at least ten ships!

Since Bell Refrigeration Company developed this freezer, in the past three years, after all its efforts, it has only sold a dozen sets of ship-based freezers!

The people at the Animal Husbandry Corporation placed orders for at least ten units at a time, and the people at Bell Refrigeration Company couldn't sit still.

Not only did they receive a delegation from the Animal Husbandry Corporation to inspect their company with high standards, but they also accompanied them to the Songjiang Naval Shipyard to inspect the frozen supply ship ordered by the navy.

Although this thing is said to be a refrigeration supply ship specially designed for the navy, it is different from ordinary civilian transport ships... At least it is impossible for civilian ships to install a total of four 55mm rapid-fire naval guns on the front, rear, left and right decks.

At the same time, there are very few civilian transport ships that come with a large crane.

There are also very few civilian transport ships that will increase their speed to twelve knots... In order to keep up with the speed of the main battleships, naval supply ships must be fast enough, otherwise they cannot keep up... When ordinary naval transport ships use steam engines for daily navigation,

The cruising speed is actually only about eight knots.

Although the Navy's frozen supply ship has many special features, the core point remains the same, that is, it is still just a refrigerated transport ship used to transport fresh food, especially fresh meat.

And this is what the Animal Husbandry Corporation is pursuing.

Since His Majesty personally mentioned the refrigerated transportation used by the Navy at the enlarged staff meeting in front of the imperial court in October, the senior staff officials quickly arranged the task.

"Build this refrigerated transport ship to transport meat from overseas areas back to the mainland!"

In the end, the specific task fell to the Animal Husbandry Corporation... After all, the refrigerated transport ship is a new thing at first glance, and new things basically have one characteristic, that is, they are expensive.

Secondly, there may be immature technology and various problems may arise, etc.

Under such circumstances, it would be more troublesome to directly let private enterprises do it. It is better for government-run enterprises to directly take the lead and set an example.

Among the many government-run enterprises, the most suitable ones are actually several large government-run ocean shipping companies, such as Pacific Shipping Company, Jiangnan Shipping Company, Indo-Pacific Shipping Company, and Yangtze River Shipping Company.

However, these government-run shipping companies are said to be government-run enterprises, but in fact they are all local government-run shipping companies. Pacific Shipping looks very famous, but in fact it was invested and established by the Finance Department under the governor of Jiangbei. Jiangnan Shipping

The company is not even a provincial enterprise, but a subsidiary of Songjiang Prefecture...it is just a government enterprise.

Indo-Pacific Shipping Company seems to have some relationship with India, but in fact this company is under the control of the governor of Guangdong.

The Yangtze River Shipping Company is more complicated. It has changed hands several times, and now its ownership is actually under the hands of the Yingtianfu Finance Department.

In the shipping industry, because the local governments were more active in the early years, the Ministry of Industry was lazy in the early years, leading to the current situation. There is no shipping company directly under the Ministry of Industry, and other large government-run shipping companies.

They are all local enterprises...

Because the shipping industry is relatively open and there are no official restrictions, local government-run shipping companies not only face fierce competition from private enterprises, but also the competition between each other is very cruel and fierce...

Under such circumstances, if you ask them to spend tens of thousands to invest in a refrigerated transport ship to complete the tasks assigned by the superiors, there is no problem, but if you ask them to spend more than ten or two hundred thousand to invest in a refrigerated transport ship, the technical risk is very high, and

The shipping market is also unstable for new ship types, and one ship is not enough. What others want is at least ten ships to form a preliminary frozen import maritime transportation system.

To be honest, they are not very willing...of course, and more importantly, they cannot afford it.

This means spending at least one million, or even two million yuan, in a short period of time. Even though shipping companies like them are quite large, they won't be able to come up with so much cash for a while.

If you spend one or two million to enter the refrigerated transportation industry, those competitors will be able to rob you of the conventional freight market and the passenger transport market.

Therefore, the large local shipping companies are not willing to pay for this... Even if His Majesty personally said that he wants to engage in refrigerated transportation, they are already walking on thin ice in the competition in the shipping market, and their lives are very difficult... With this intention

I don't have that much strength either.

The higher authorities have also tried to coordinate with the banking industry, trying to get banks to provide loans... but they still found the financial banks of policy banks.

But a big boss at Renren Financial Bank said yes...but within a few days he turned against him, saying that his risk control staff said that refrigerated transportation technology was too risky and the refrigerated transportation market was unclear.

The most important thing is that the entities that applied for loans, that is, the local shipping companies, all owe a lot of debt, and the mortgages that should be mortgaged have basically been mortgaged... Now the loan of two million is given out.

, they were unable to provide any collateral.

Lending money to them now is equivalent to an unsecured or low-interest loan... Once these shipping companies have some setbacks in the next few years, they will directly go bankrupt for you... Then someone from the financial bank will have to jump off the building.

, the level of the person who jumped off the building must not be too low, otherwise he will not be able to fill the big hole of two million Chu Yuan...
To be continued...