Traveling through history leaving a name

Chapter 337 Encouraging
With the promotion of honeycomb briquettes, Zhang Qingfeng earned more than 8 taels of silver in just a few months, averaging about 2 taels of silver a month.

Moreover, this figure is still increasing with the promotion of honeycomb coal.

Zhang Qingfeng predicts that within half a year, the monthly sales profit from selling briquettes and briquette stoves will exceed more than 3 taels of silver, and an annual income of 40 taels of silver will not be a problem.

No wonder Emperor Wanli wanted to send so many eunuchs to open mines in various places. This mine is really very profitable.

A few months have passed, and the steel plant has not yet been built, and the coal processing plant has already started to make money.

After Emperor Wanli heard the news, he had to admire Zhang Qingfeng's business acumen.

A few months after the promotion of briquettes, briquettes accounted for [-]% of the coal consumption in the entire capital.

As for other coal merchants, after being seized by honeycomb coal, all of them had to start imitating honeycomb coal, because it would be easier to sell.

As all the coal merchants started to make briquettes, the briquette stove business immediately became Zhang Qingfeng's profit point.

In just a few months, Zhang Qingfeng sold more than 5000 briquette stoves and made a lot of money.

However, although there is honeycomb coal, more common people's families use unmovable honeycomb coal stoves built by themselves with clay bricks.

However, Zhang Qingfeng also offended many powerful people by selling coal in the capital, because most of the coal businesses in the capital were run by powerful people.

Time passed, and soon it was the end of 1605 AD.

After more than a year of construction, the steelmaking was finally completed by Zhang Qingfeng.

In the steelmaking plant, five small blast furnaces, two steelmaking open hearth furnaces, and a graphite crucible steelmaking furnace for refining special steel were built.

If all five ironmaking blast furnaces are put into use and ironmaking is carried out day and night, they will be able to produce about 2000 tons of molten iron per day, that is, an annual output of [-] tons, which is almost [-] million catties.

At the beginning, Zhang Qingfeng told Emperor Wanli to invest 500 million taels to build a 2000 million jin steel-making plant, and now 200 million taels will be completed.

However, considering the current shortage of iron ore and coal supply, only two or three blast furnaces can be used for the time being, with an average of about [-] tons of molten iron per day.

Even so, the annual output of molten iron can reach about 1000 million kilograms.

Now the pig iron on the market is 1000 Wen a catty, if 20 million catties of iron can be sold, even if it is sold at the ex-factory price of [-] Wen, after deducting the cost, it can earn [-] taels of silver a year.

If pig iron is smelted into steel, the price can be doubled several times.

With the speed of two open-hearth furnaces making steel, one furnace of molten steel can be produced in about three days, with an annual output of 400 million catties of molten steel.

With the price of a catty of steel on the market exceeding 250 Wen, even if 500 million catties of steel were sold at a discounted price of 120 Wen per catty, after deducting the cost, they could earn more than 40 taels of silver a year.

According to the estimated output of the steelworks, pig iron and steel together, there is absolutely no problem in earning more than 50 taels of silver a year.

Don't underestimate the more than 50 taels of silver, which is equivalent to more than 5 million copper coins.

As for special steel, Zhang Qingfeng will not sell it, but use it to make good machines and weapons.

The profit of the steel mill, plus the more than 40 taels of silver earned by briquettes every year, is almost a million taels of silver.

The 200 million taels of silver invested by Emperor Wanli will be paid back in two years.

Emperor Wanli was very happy to hear that the steel mill could produce [-] catties of molten iron every day and earn millions of silver a year.

Now, the textile industry plus the machine manufacturing industry, as well as cement and other products, can bring about 250 million taels of silver to Emperor Wanli every year.

Adding in the current one million taels of silver from the steel and coal plants, the total has exceeded 350 million taels.

It can be said that the money Zhang Qingfeng earns for Wanli every year has already covered the annual surplus of the national treasury.

However, as the daily steel output of the steel mill increased, what Emperor Wanli was worried about still happened.

The entire Shuntian Prefecture and the surrounding prefectures do not use that much steel at all, and the transportation costs outside Shuntian Prefecture are very high. If they are sold at a low price, they will not make much money.

Zhang Qingfeng's machinery manufacturing plant, steam engine manufacturing plant, and other factories use limited steel every year, and one month's steel output is enough for these factories to use for more than a year.

In order to digest the steel, Zhang Qingfeng reported to Emperor Wanli and decided to build a Qianqing Palace for Wanli using reinforced concrete.

He believes that if the Qianqing Palace can be built with reinforced concrete, then the rich and powerful businessmen in the capital will be very interested in the reinforced concrete structure of the house.

At that time, the sales of steel will definitely increase, and Zhang Qingfeng will not worry about the steel being sold out.

In order to make Emperor Wanli agree to his idea, Zhang Qingfeng described the benefits of reinforced concrete buildings to Emperor Wanli in detail.

Such as strong, fireproof, bright, spacious, comfortable, and so on.

The most important thing here is fire prevention, because the Qianqing Palace has been burned twice.

At the same time, he also used exquisite paper and high-quality paint to draw the renderings of the newly built Qianqing Palace.

The Qianqing Palace in the rendering is decorated with pure white tiles and glass. The sun shines on it, and its reflection makes the whole building very beautiful.

In order to get Emperor Wanli to agree to let him build the Qianqing Palace, Zhang Qingfeng got out all the glass and made samples for Emperor Wanli to see.

According to Zhang Qingfeng's design, the Qianqing Palace was built with a reinforced concrete structure and was a frame structure.

The Xinqian Qing Palace was built as a dog, 70 meters long, 50 meters wide, 25 meters high, and has five floors.

It contains two halls and more than 130 rooms.

These rooms include bedrooms, study rooms, collection rooms, drawing rooms, leisure rooms, sports rooms, music rooms, and so on.

The main building and interior and exterior decoration of the entire Qianqing Palace cost almost 200 million taels of silver, which is about 20 billion copper coins.

Under Zhang Qingfeng's constant instigation and after half a month of consideration, Emperor Wanli finally agreed to Zhang Qingfeng's idea and approved him to be responsible for building the Qianqing Palace.

As for the fine wood from the Qianqing Palace that was planned to be built in the early stage, it was used to build the Kunning Palace.

Regarding Zhang Qingfeng's plan to spend 200 million taels of silver to build the Qianqing Palace, the ruling and opposition parties were amazed.

However, the money was earned by Zhang Qingfeng himself and belonged to the internal treasury, so although many court ministers were jealous of the money, there was nothing they could do about it.

Emperor Wanli was famous in history for being stingy. As long as the money entered his inner treasury, the imperial court would never get a penny from him.

According to historical records, once a war broke out on the border, the treasury had no money to send money to the border soldiers, and the courtiers begged hard, hoping that Emperor Wanli would get some money from the inner treasury.

At first Wanli didn't agree at all. Later, the courtiers begged many times, and the border was really critical, so he took out a little change that didn't help. This shows how picky Emperor Wanli is.

Just after Emperor Wanli agreed to Zhang Qingfeng's request to build the Qianqing Palace with a reinforced concrete structure, Zhang Qingfeng immediately summoned thousands of workers and started work.

(End of this chapter)