Chapter 404: Buy, Buy, Buy
Translator: _Min_ Editor: Rundi
What did Jiang Chen do in the past few days?
To summarize it in two words, spend money.
With a unit of billions.The military base on New Moon Island has a 2300 meters long double runway airport, a radar station as well as a platform connected via a dam the size of two football fields. After he paid for the construction, Jiang Chen lost another 1.4 billion on his account. Including the 4 billion he spent a few days ago, he used 5.4 billion in three short days.
And that was not all.
To prepare for the extraction of molybdenum, Jiang Chen infused 1 billion to Future Mining, through a tender, he planned to build two semi-submersible offshore platforms south of Ange Island.
The semi-submersible offshore platform will mostly be used in the deep sea with its primary application in oil and gas extraction. Its principle was similar to a submarine with the platform built on a giant floating device. The device would submerge below the water and connect to the seabed through tubes. A balancing device similar to the weight on a fishing rod will be installed below the floatation device which would allow the platform to maintain its balance through the tides and storms.
The benefit of the offshore platform was that it was moveable. Once the mining deposition on the seabed has been completely exhausted, it could be transported away by a transport vessel. Jiang Chen planned to station two soldiers and three workers on the offshore platform and control the underwater mining device through electronic components. A boat would visit every week to bring the necessities and haul away the molybdenum ore rich with manganese nodules.
Although the mining robot technology was still under development, Jiang Chen believes that it won’t take long before results come from camp 27. Before that, it was not a bad choice to first build the offshore platform.
These mined manganese nodules will be pulled to Ange Island because, in addition to the rich molybdenum oxide, more than 50% of the structure was composed of iron oxide and manganese oxide. To treat these manganese nodules, Jiang Chen had injected two hundred million more USD in Future Mining and built a manganese nodule treatment plant, a molybdenum ore refinery, as well as a steel plant and an aluminum plant.The manganese nodule treatment plant would first crush the ore, complete the initial sorting and output the manganese and rich molybdenum slag. The slag will be sent to the molybdenum refinery for secondary processing and the manufacturing of the molybdenum ore required for the virtual reality helmet.
The steel plant and aluminum plant were used to process the iron and aluminum ores purchased from BHP while also treating the residues of the manganese nodules.
The complete production line was expected to be completed in three months. By that time, the first step of Ange Island’s industrial transformation would be complete. The rich mining resources would not only satisfy the demand on the island, but it could also be exported for profit!
Once he finished taking care of Future Mining, Jiang Chen began to work on the headquarter of Future Technology.
Coro Island was chosen as the location of the headquarter to ensure the safety of the quantum computer. Jiang Chen spent one hundred million USD to build the headquarter with no consideration of its cost to ensure that the building was strong enough.
Also, Jiang Chen decided to place the virtual reality helmet in the modern world. Since billions of virtual reality helmets would need to be produced, he would never be able to transport all of them back. Especially if he had to transport food, steel, and firearms back to the modern world.
Since he made the decision to produce in the modern world, then he must be cautious with security and the privacy of the production of these virtual reality helmets.
But to this point, Jiang Chen had already planned ahead. The platform he built near New Moon Island was perfect for producing the virtual reality helmet!
No place was more secure than right beside the military base. Under the surveillance of the wide range life signal detector, no agents would be able to escape the eyes of the workers in the radar station. Once they discovered any unregistered personnel, the drones would either capture or evict them. To the people resisting arrest, the drone would initiate its attack program to eliminate the threat.
Jiang Chen decided that the production of the virtual reality helmet should be done automatically. Other than the input of raw resources and the export of finished products requiring some human involvement, the production process that must be kept a secret has to be done in a “black box.” Although the cost to the autonomous production line would be high, it was necessary for privacy purposes.
The design of the plant was based on Lu Huasheng’s blueprint and built by modern world construction companies. There were a total of three buildings, and each occupied a corner of the triangle shaped platform. The cost totaled two million, which was negligible compared to the mega projects.
After a buying spree, Jiang Chen used 6.7 billion of the 30 billion loan. But he didn’t feel pained at all because he knew that he would make the money back in no time.
Putting spending money aside, Jiang Chen certainly made a lot of money too.
Tao Ming didn’t disappoint him as he signed a total of four hundred thousand boxes from Future Biology. With an estimated profit of 500 USD per box, the total profit was 200 million USD.
On the other hand, the agent of Emma Watson quickly agreed to the sponsorship agreement and immediately arranged Emma to head to Coro Island for the filming of a commercial and design. The reason why they agreed without hesitation was partially due to the one million USD sponsorship and partially because of the opportunity to distribute through Future 1.0.
The insane number of users for Future 1.0 meant that not a lot of people would reject the opportunity to put their face on there.
Since the sales were successful, production could not stagger behind.
To increase the production of nutrient supply, Jiang Chen made a few trips to the apocalypse and brought back five newly built organic converters, as well as 10 tons of inducers to expand the plantation area of DH seaweed.
Therefore, the nutrient supply plant workers began a nightmare of overtime schedules. To finish the production task, the technicians responsible for inducing the DH seaweed even slept on the ground of the lab. The plantation boat on the sea worked rotating shifts. The workers from the three shifts poured the DH seaweed down, fertilizing the sea farm, and cutting the newly grown seaweed…
Of course, Jiang Chen was generous with the overtime bonuses. Compared to the 200 million, overtime bonuses were nothing.
To prevent the workers from working excessively, Jiang Chen ordered Zhan Shujie to hire 60 additional workers to fill the void in labor. To Zhan Shujie and Tao Ming’s outstanding contributions to Future Biology, Jiang Chen gave them a generous bonus.
A dividend of 1% per person as their annual bonus. While they were both ecstatic, they worked even harder.
Everyone could see the future of Future Biology. Even a dividend of 1%, with the current growth trend, they could at least take in more than ten million USD at the end of the year.
In his half month, Jiang Chen finally felt what it was like to be busy. He wanted to split himself in half so that one half could be on Ange Island, while the other stationed between New Moon and Coro.
But after a busy half month, everything was finally on the right track.
Just as Jiang Chen thought he could take some time off, a new problem quickly emerged.
Without including the independent Celestial, Future International’s employee number in Xin reached 400. While it was a small number on paper, Xin had a total of 20,000, to begin with; the working population barely reached 10,000.
Fishing boats could rarely be spotted on Xin’s sea territory, people were demanded everywhere. Basic infrastructure development boosted the local employment rate. What used to be an island with the highest unemployment rate, Ange Island, now lacked a workforce.
Especially once the tourism resources were completed, there would be a more significant gap in the labor force. Jiang Chen estimated that once the projects are completed, his employees would at least increase by 2000, and at least create an additional 5000 positions in supporting industries!
Xin didn’t have that many people looking for work.
Therefore, Jiang Chen set his eyes on a superpower currently experiencing an immigration wave.
But he was not looking at the rich who did everything they could to leave, but the labor force with an academic background higher than high school.
