Chapter 85 – Money is not a Problem
Feng Yu called the school and requested for 1 week leave to help his father set up the factory. The reason he gave to the school was that his second uncle had a fall and he needs to take care of him for the next few days. Of course, Feng Yu doesn’t have any second uncle.
“Xiao Yu, why are we using machines to dig the ground? How much will these costs? We can get people to dig manually, and it will be cheap. Furthermore, it’s only the foundation, why are we digging so deep? 1 meter will do.” Feng Xingtai’s heart was bleeding. This loser son of his spends money like water.
“Dad, it’s only a small sum. Also, foundations are the most important for all buildings, and we should not save on this.”
“Then we also don’t need to build a wall to fence up our factory. Now the brick factory on our farm is only supplying their bricks to us.”
Feng Xingtai felt that Feng Yu was wasting money to build a wall around the perimeter of the land. Even if they wanted to have a yard, they could just use some branches as fences. Was there a need to use bricks to build a 2 meters high wall around the perimeter?
“Dad, our machines are costly. You are not afraid that someone would come in create trouble? What about those children from the village? They will sneak in to play in the factory. What if they are injured by the machines? You bear to see that happen? Above the walls, we still need to install barbed wires and rear at least 10 guard dogs. We can’t use mongrels. Mongrels are not fierce enough to scare people away.”
Feng Yu started to talk about his plans for the factory, but when he turned around, Feng Xingtai had left. It’s depressing. There were generation gaps in this era?
To maintain the quality of the construction, Feng Yu had spent a lot to hire a head engineer from the Provincial Construction company to lead the construction team. At first, the head engineer was not interested. This was only a one-story factory in the farm, and there was no need for an engineer like him to oversee the construction. This was an insult to him.
But when Feng Yu offered him 50 RMB a day, he immediately changed his mind. He was an engineer, and his monthly salary was only slightly more than 100 RMB. 10 days, and his salary will be 500 RMB. This was too attractive!
All available construction workers were hired from the farm, town and Farm department. There were more than 100 workers, and there was also construction machinery. What Feng Yu wanted was speed.
In another 2 weeks, the land will freeze, and the construction will come to a halt. In that era, there was still no thawing agents or deicing agents available. That’s why he needed to expedite the construction of the factory.
Feng Yu wanted the walls of the factory to be 50 cm thick despite the engineer telling him that 37 cm would be enough. Feng Yu felt that 37 cm thickness was not sturdy enough. There were enough bricks, cement, and workers around. Just build a sturdy factory!
If the bricks were those hollow bricks, Feng Yu even wanted to add steel reinforcement beams.
The factory was divided into 4 sections. Oil extraction, sugar production, raw materials and storage, and animal feed sections. Each section occupies more than 10,000 Square meters. If it was in his past life, this factory was considered an enormous factory.
Feng Yu decided to carry on expanding the factory in future. There might still be a lot of empty spaces left after the first batch of machines was installed. But in future, Feng Yu will slowly fill up the empty spaces. He wants to build a food processing base!
“Xiao Feng boss, the construction cost for this factory must be high.”
“It is not considered high. It should be around 1 million RMB.” Feng Yu felt that it was very cheap. In less than 10 years, there will be a highway passing through their district and about it will be about 100 meters away from the factory. This factory itself can fetch at least tens of millions then!
Although it had exceeded the initial investment amount, Feng Yu still felt that it was a good deal. He doesn’t even mind if the factory doesn’t make any profits. Nevertheless, Feng Yu was still confident that this factory can make money and it will be a considerable profit.
The engineer was shocked. This kid can really talk big. Kids from wealthy families were different. He was talking about 1 million RMB just like it was 100 RMB. In the farm, 1 million RMB can build 2 high rise buildings!
These types of production line were available in almost every Soviet Union cities. But the newest and most advanced machines were not cheap. After some discussion, they decided to get 3 types of production lines. Oil extraction and sugar production lines will be using the 1985 machine models, and the animal feed production line will be using the 1983 machine models.
These machines were considered the most advanced in the whole of China. As for the price, Kirilenko gave Feng Yu a 70% discount. This was a private deal between him and Feng Yu. It will not be recorded in their company’s books.
The technology of these machines was more advanced than the most sophisticated machines in China by at least 10 years, and Feng Yu had bought them for about half the price of domestic produced machines. These machines were really dirt cheap. Of course, Kirilenko had forcibly purchased the machines as “scrap metals” from those factories. In that era, there were corruptions everywhere in the Soviet Union. This includes the state-owned factories. A few factories’ directors made money for themselves by secretly selling off those unused production lines machines.
It was easy to get these types of machines, but it was hard to get the production line machines for agricultural machinery. Feng Yu not only wanted to the production lines, he even wanted the technology.
The technology was not only just the documents. It still needs the expert’s guidance. After World War 2, the Soviet Union had progressed so rapidly was because they had gotten many skilled talents from Germany. As such, they knew that they should not allow their experts to move out of the Soviet Union.
However, the Soviet Union did corporate with some Eastern Europe countries. But after the fallout with China, the Soviet Union’s engineers were reluctant to work in China. Mainly, it was because China’s reputation was smeared by the rest of the countries.
Kirilenko had got his hands on the machines wanted by Bing City’s Machinery Factory, but there were no engineers who were willing to come to China. If there were no experts to calibrate and set up the machines for the production lines, it would be hard for the workers at Machinery Factory to figure it out themselves.
But Kirilenko promised Feng Yu that he will solve this problem soon, and he will find those engineers that were willing to go over to China. Feng Yu thought for a while and said that he wants to offer high salaries for a few mechanical engineering experts.
The Soviet Union’s economy was going downhill, and their people’s income remained stagnant since 1980. This year, they even had a dropped in their income.
A skilled mechanical engineer’s salary was about 500 to 800 Rubles a month, and Feng Yu was offering 1,000 Rubles a month for them if they come over to China to work.
Engineers also need to feed their families. Many families in the Soviet Union were the same. The men would go out and work while the women stayed at home. Feng Yu knew that if he offered a high salary, there would be engineers who were willing to work for him.
Since Feng Yu was willing to pay, then it will be easier for Kirilenko to look for engineers. However, Kirilenko told Feng Yu that it was impossible for him to recruit too many engineers but there shouldn’t be any problem to get 3 to 5 engineers!
……
Within a week, the construction was completed. There was a lot of firecrackers, and everyone was all smiles. However, only Feng Xingtai had a forced smile.
The day before, Feng Yu had calculated the total amount spent for the construction of the factory, and Feng Xingtai’s heart almost stopped. Didn’t Feng Yu say that it will not be expensive to build the factory? This amount doesn’t even include the machinery cost. If adding in the cost of the machines, the total amount should reach 2 million?
When can they get back their investments just by selling some soybean oil and sugar? This good-for-nothing son must be taught a lesson with a beating!