"This place is the land approved by His Majesty the King to your company. It belongs to the royal family. You can freely use and build any factory except for the fort." The servants of the British royal family led the directors of Western companies such as Li Jinde to a large piece of barren land outside London, with only a few farmhouses and a piece of farmland.

Because it is winter, the farmhouses and farmland are covered with snow.

"Isn't this farmland?" Li Jinde asked in surprise.

"The tax on farmland is too low, even worse than breeding sheep. If you rent it to you as a factory, the rent will be higher every year. Moreover, His Majesty the King is not short of farmland. His Majesty the King has carefully selected. The crops produced here in previous years can be transported to the city by carriages and the Thames River, so the transportation here is very convenient." The servant introduced to them the land that Charles I rented to Li Jinde and others.

Li Jinde and others walked around the plot and were generally satisfied with the place.

"We plan to build a cotton textile factory, a wool textile factory, and a smelting factory," Li Jinde and others planned the land, which basically was a processing industry that could obtain raw materials in London.

As for the Song and Ming porcelains with local characteristics in mainland China, tea cannot be produced here for the time being due to different water and soil. In fact, rare things are expensive. Porcelain and tea transported from China can be sold at a higher price than directly produced locally, and are more likely to be regarded as "high-end products" and obtain higher profits.

"There should be a warehouse in this location, which is a workers' farmhouse. If a small piece of farmland is retained to plant fruits to provide benefits, it should be able to improve the work efficiency of workers." Some Chinese businessmen put forward their own opinions.

The Western trading companies they run are equivalent to foreign companies for British workers. In order to quickly recruit local handicraft workers and establish a high-end brand image, they plan to use more wages and benefits to recruit skilled workers.

"I see we will first draw the map of this plot before planning and plan on the sketch." A businessman suggested.

"What's the point." A group of businessmen nodded.

They quickly made people measure the royal land that Charles I rented to them and drew sketches. According to the agreement between the Western companies and Charles I, Western companies submitted rent to the royal family based on the land and area. Charles I, who was eager for money, had no concerns and granted a piece of royal land directly to the Western companies. Compared with the squire, merchants and nobles of the parliament, Charles I felt that the Western companies did not threaten his royal power, so he was not very worried about the Western companies that could bring him a lot of rental income every year. The main thing was the money issue. Establishing a standing army and navy loyal to the king required a lot of money. Charles I, who wanted to make a career, had a great desire for money to be extremely high.

A small and medium-sized gunship costs thousands of pounds, a battleship costs tens of thousands of pounds, and a large amount of repair costs every year. Charles I also had plans to establish a standing army to enhance national strength and the king's control over the country. The army is not as expensive as the navy, but the total expenses of the army with a large number of people are more than several times that of the navy.

"The lease term of this land is ten years, and the contract can be renewed with the royal family depending on the situation. The traffic conditions are good, which means it is still a distance from the core area of ​​London. However, for the factory, it doesn't matter if it is not in the core area. As long as the finished product can be transported to the market quickly."

Everyone discussed and planned the leased land, and divided the entire leased area into different areas, cotton textile mills, wool textile mills, smelting plants, sugar factories, workers' farmhouses, small farmlands, and warehouses, forming a small industrial park.

"The steam engine is still on the merchant ship. I wonder if the cold winter will affect the machine?"

"We still asked the workers to move the steam engine to the ground to prevent the cold winter from affecting the steam engine. The price of a small steam engine is thousands of taels of silver. Our factories will still need to rely on them in the future. It is too difficult to transport a steam engine from the mainland."

"Cotton textile mills and wool textile mills, sugar mills need to hire workers there, but iron smelting plants should still be manipulated by our own workers. Metallurgical technology is the core technology listed by the government, and the workers in Britain should not be exposed to our core technology. The steel we produce is suitable for casting artillery and weapons, and is military supplies." Many of the directors of Western companies were sent by the Ministry of Revenue. One of their missions is to protect core industrial technology when setting up factories locally to ensure a leading position in European products.

"Don't forget that sugar-making factories also need to be divided into two production lines. We have a long-standing sugar-cane technology, but the sugar-cane in the West is completely planted in overseas places called West Africa and the West Indies. Once they have a war, the price of sugar-cane will rise on a large scale. Our Academy of Sciences has developed a beet sugar-making technology that can replace sugar-cane sugar-making technology. Beets are crops here and can be grown and produced on site... In other words, we also need to think of ways to get from the king or the gentry.

Rent a large piece of farm to grow beets, or we can encourage farmers nearby to grow beets, and then we buy beets from them. The land that the king rented us was farmland, and there were many farmers around. We found ways to let them grow beets and make sugar. As far as I know, they have not used beet sugar technology, and beet sugar technology also needs to be kept confidential..." The directors from the government listed beet sugar technology as the same core technology as metallurgy technology.

The core of the textile industry is not the textile industry itself, but the steam engine technology. It is not easy to imitate the steam engine. There is also a lack of the high-quality steel and machine tools required by standard steam engines.

"The craftsmen who presided over the construction are our craftsmen, but they are still insufficient in staff and need to temporarily hire more craftsmen and stonemasons. I wonder if we can build our Chinese-style houses."

"Start hire British workers. As long as the price is higher than the workshop owners here, they will definitely flock to you by then."

Everyone is naturalizing the layout of the industrial park. The next step is to build factories, install steam engines, and recruit cheap manual workers in Britain.

"They also need to train them in Chinese, otherwise the communication cost is too high. It is better to give British workers who are proficient in Chinese to the opportunity to be promoted to middle and lower-level management to stimulate them to learn Chinese." Li Jinde, who was once deeply troubled by language barriers, put forward suggestions for transforming British workers.
Chapter completed!