Luzon.

San Francisco Freeport, countless merchant ships are parked in harbors. The rail carriages on the dock are transporting trucks of goods to the dock. Most of the people responsible for loading and unloading are dark-skinned Kunlun slaves. Under the command of the dock manager, they use pulley cranes to lift the goods onto the ship...

A busy and lively scene.

"These are all peppers, there are cloves and beans there, the car lined up behind is loaded with cinnamon, the docks there are white sugar and black tea, and the docks are unloading cotton and jelly sugar......"

The chief manager at the dock carefully introduced to Qin Lang and his party, saying that he also sent several spices that had just been randomly inspected to Qin Lang. "The pepper we transplanted in Luzon Island has a high yield this year. The processed black and white peppers are very good, with high quality and high yields."

“Where are these peppers going to be shipped?”

"Guangzhou, this batch of transports Guangzhou, the next batch of transports to Hangzhou, as well as Yangzhou, Dengzhou and Tianjin Port." The general manager was very excited. Since Qin Lang went to Nanyang to meet with other countries on the sea alliance and reached a spice trade alliance, the spice market in Nanyang has changed.

In the past, in Palembang, where Gantuoli, one pound of black pepper could be bought for one hundred kilograms of black pepper, but when transported to the Central Plains, one pound of black pepper could be sold for ten kilograms of money, with a price difference of one thousand times.

However, it is not too far from Gantuo Li Paogang in Nanyang to Guangzhou, and the profits are so high that it is outrageous.

As a major product in spices, pepper is not valuable and not rare. Unlike lilac and nutmeg that only produces spice islands, pepper is produced from India to the Lion Kingdom to the Nanyang Islands, and even in Piaoyue Zhenla, which is very cheap in the place of origin.

However, the merchants kept turning back and the heavy taxes along the way led to the continuous rise of the price.

Whether it was the Tang Dynasty in the Middle Earth or the Western countries, the prices of spices were extremely high, and merchants made a lot of money by selling spices.

"What is the export price of this batch of black pepper?"

"It is divided into three levels according to the upper, middle and lower levels, with the upper level of sixty coins, the medium level of fifty coins, and the lower level of forty coins."

During the Zhenguan period, the black pepper in Nanyang Palembang was about ten cents per kilogram, which was still the price of leaving the port. If you purchase pepper directly from the indigenous people, the price would be cheaper, and you might even have ten cents per kilogram.

A few years after the establishment of the Spice Alliance, the price of spice production has increased significantly. Although there are spices in India and other places, the civil war has not stopped after the collapse of the Northern Territory Empire in India in recent years. This not only affected the picking and processing of peppers, but also affected the sales. The local kings who were in conflict and separatist had set up card and taxes everywhere, and even bandits everywhere, which made the peppers in India now have poor quality and small quantity, and they could not be transported.

On the contrary, the maritime environment in Nanyang is very good, and the joint fleet of Nanyang Xuanwei Division patrols and escorts to combat pirates, so that merchants do not have to worry about being robbed.

Even if they were robbed, the Nanyang Xuanwei Department would still provide compensation. They have this confidence and strength. As long as the merchant ship pays an insurance, they will compensate them if they can catch the pirates and regain the cargo.

On the other hand, the countries in Southeast Asia established spice alliances, unified the quality standards of spices, set grades and prices, and even agreed on taxes. They would not repeatedly intercept taxation.

Therefore, even if Nanyang cannot directly purchase cheap spices or raw materials, the quality is more guaranteed, taxes, etc. are unified and standardized, and even safer.

A pound of high-quality black pepper costs 60 yuan. This is the export price of the Nanyang spice trading bank, excluding taxes. The tax is uniform, with one tax of ten taxes. This tax rate is not very high for hot-selling goods such as spices.

Sixty-six cents per pound can transport the best black pepper away.

At this time, the ship with pepper in the port was a trading ship for Luzon's own Luzon ship. The ship was from Luzon, and the cargo owner was also Luzon itself. This belonged to the Luzon official camp and was controlled by the Luzon Office of Internal Affairs. They placed orders in the spice shop in the San Francisco Port of Luzon, purchased spices, and handed over to their own fleet to Guangzhou. According to the agreement with the court, half of the spices were bought to Guangzhou Maritime Bureau.

The price is 1,200 ounces of high-quality black pepper, 1,200 ounces of medium-quality black pepper, and 1,000 ounces of low-quality black pepper, which is almost twenty times the price directly.

However, compared with the price of black pepper to Hong Kong at the beginning of Zhenguan, it was ten times cheaper.

Of course, according to regulations, the spices sold to Guangzhou by Luzon must be sold as tariffs for one tenth of the goods, and the remaining 90% will be sold. The Maritime Bureau wants to buy half of them, which means buying them at the price of 1,200 yuan per catty. Only half of the spices can be sold to the spice shop in Guangzhou, and only the spice shops are allowed.

However, Luzon also has its own spice shop in Guangzhou, with a license to import spices.

The last 4.5% of the spices are usually left for the incense shops, and the remaining 2.5% are sold to other incense shops.

In terms of price, the import price of Luzon Incense Bank is 20% higher than that of Bo to the court, while the price of selling it to other Incense Banks is 20% higher.

Although many of the black peppers in Luzon are produced by themselves, some are purchased, and the freight ships are mainly owned, and even the incense shops in Guangzhou are owned, Luzon has always been one after another.

Each link is settled separately, and everything is based on the market.

Moreover, there are not only those from the Luzon House of Internal Affairs, but also from the royal Qin family, and even public-private joint ventures. Therefore, the accounts are still very clear, and you will be responsible for your own losses and make independent accounting.

In general, Luzon now accounts for more than 90% of the spice trade in the Central Plains. With its advantages in transportation of treasure ships on sea, Luzon almost takes over the sea cargo transportation between the Central Plains and the South China Sea, of which 80% of the cargo owners belong to Luzon.

The price of pepper shipped to the Central Plains fell ten times to the Hong Kong market, which was created by Qin Lang. The main reason was to increase export sales. The purpose of small profits and quick turnover was actually to suppress other competitors.

Even if the Qin family dropped the sales price ten times, they would not lose money because they seized almost the entire trade share of Tang spices, especially by lowering the price ten times, which brought about a surge in sales volume of more than ten times.

For the spice allies of the South China Sea, they did not oppose the Qin family, because the spice allies led by Qin Lang increased the price of spices from five to six times, especially controlling the export of spices in their own hands, planting, picking, processing and sales, and then the export tax was also guaranteed, which brought the spice growers, processing and trafficking merchants, and the countries in Southeast Asia to make a lot of profits.

As for the maritime trade of spices, most of them also own a small share in the current market. In the past, those who engaged in international spice traffic were all Indian merchants, Persian merchants, even Egyptian merchants, Central Plains merchants, etc. They often also sell regionally and keep replacing their hands.

The local merchants in Nanyang were basically just wandering around in Nanyang, and they didn't make much trouble, so they didn't care about the fact that the Qin family's fleet occupied a major share after the alliance was established.

Even because they took the Alliance ship, the royal families or some big merchants of the South China countries have begun to trade international spices. They mainly rented Qin's treasure ships, took Qin's cargo ships, or bought Qin's ships, and started to trade. But after all, they just started doing this business and their share was still very small, so they did not have much opinion on the current market share allocation of international spices trade.

It is precisely because of this that Qin Lang established a spice alliance, controlling the prices and supply of raw materials from most spice origins, and suppressing the terminal prices of spices on the other hand. With his strong maritime transportation capabilities, the original pattern of the entire international spice trade was disrupted.

The import price of spice raw materials soared ten times, while the price of the terminal market fell ten times. For most traditional spice merchants, this is unacceptable and adaptable, not to mention that the Qin family's treasure ship can carry more goods, run faster and turn around faster.

In particular, the Qin family's spice ship has strong ocean navigation capabilities and does not stop many ports along the way. It can even directly enter the Mediterranean Sea. The Indian merchants, Persian merchants, Egyptian merchants, and Dashi merchants can only become second-level distributors of the Tang family, and even the taxation process is reduced in the middle. The Qin family's spice trade directly reaches the trading ports for terminal sales, and the big profits are in their own hands.

Traditional maritime profit traders have become the secondary distributors of the Qin family.

The price of Qin family spices imported into ports in various countries has basically dropped by about ten times compared to the past, but sales have increased by dozens of times, and sales have increased significantly. European spice merchants cannot control the prices anymore.

The surge in sales is of course a huge benefit for the origin of spices.

The Qin family has now begun to grow pepper in Luzon in large quantities, and even monopolizes the cultivation of cloves and nutmeg.

Although black pepper with an export price of only 60 cents per pound, this price is basically the same as the high-quality salt price in the Datang salt monopoly. The big grain in the two capitals costs only 20 cents per pound, and a few pounds of rice is only 30 to 40 times more expensive than rice, so naturally the profit is extremely high.

Moreover, spice trade is the thing, especially in long-distance international trade, and its goods are the lightest and easy to transport, so the profit is huge.

If you transport slaves, fur, cloth, precious metals such as gold and silver, or directly transport iron and other things, you won’t even transport much.

Moreover, after almost monopolizing the international trade of spices, it also brought the Qin family a spice processing industry chain, making perfumes, and even processing spices, which are also very good businesses.
Chapter completed!