British 1986

Things like steel plants are too small and not environmentally friendly.

It's not that Allen is environmentally friendly, but it's too small. Officials will shut it down in the name of not being environmentally friendly. If you don't want to shut it down, you'll have to pay a fine. A huge fine, and you'll go bankrupt within a few days if you don't pay it.

For large-scale steel plants, the investment is too large, whether it is equipment, personnel, or the purchase of corresponding raw materials, a large amount of money must be invested.

Moreover, the products of steel mills, ordinary primary processed products, are not marketable. If you want to make money, you can only go the special steel route. But whether it is R\u0026D personnel or equipment, you have to invest a lot of money. Just for a mouse, open an Internet cafe. Allen is not interested in this kind of thing.

Seeing Allen's nonchalant look, Old Karl reminded: "Master, weren't you still thinking about the tinplate factory at home some time ago?"

"Is there any relationship between these two?"

After pouring a cup of tea with his own hands, Allen pushed it to Old Karl, then leaned back on the backrest and sighed.

There is a lot of business at home now, so he has to worry about it no matter what.

At the very least, we must ensure that all factories can continue to operate.

Some of these factories he had heard of or had contact with before, but some factories he didn't understand at all.

He doesn't have the ability to make any inventions and creations. These things are all ready-made. Even if he wants to make some changes, they are either out of date or limited by the general environment or technical conditions, so he can't change them.

"Master, look, if you acquire a few small steel plants and transport the production lines to Australia, wouldn't you have a layout there? Then Australia produces iron ore, and the price of raw materials is low, so you can move the tinplate factory there too. You can produce something else.”

"Um?"

Allen frowned and motioned for Old Karl to continue.

"I have been in the United States for the past two years and found that many of their food packaging like to use metal packaging, such as cookie boxes, candy boxes and the like. When you were on vacation in Australia at the beginning of the year, weren't you still worried about these? I thought, can Can’t the tinplate factory be transformed and also produce these packages for food factories?”

"?"

After listening to Old Karl's words, Allen suddenly became enlightened for a moment.

This thing has a bit of inertial thinking, and he has never paid attention to such a small thing.

The main reason is that he rarely has the opportunity to unpack snacks by himself. The servants pack them up and bring them to him on a plate or in a special small container.

After opening a certain distance from ordinary people's lives, he has ignored these small details.

Now that it was suddenly mentioned, it made his thinking a little divergent.

For a long time, the food manufacturing factory at home has been limited by cost. Basically, all snacks are packaged in either plastic bags or paper boxes. As for metal boxes?

Where can I use that?

In the old earl's mind, using iron boxes is not a waste of things.

But Allen doesn't see it that way now. Things like packaging add to the product!

Good packaging can at least double the price of the product several times.

For example, if ordinary snacks are packed in plastic bags or iron boxes, even if they are the same thing, if they only change the packaging, the latter will definitely sell for a higher price than the former.

Until now, Allen still remembers that when he was a child in his previous life, he liked to collect iron boxes for food packaging, and used these iron boxes to store pictures, aces, and other small toys.

I have always had sentiments, and later this over-packaging situation became more and more popular. It is very common for various candies, chocolates, moon cakes, etc. to be packaged in iron boxes.

The tinplate factory can produce these thin iron sheet processed products, and it is not only food packaging. Allen instantly thought that this thing can also be used as clothing packaging.

For example, the wool processing factory at home sponsors uniforms for the Manchester United team.

Produce a batch of white T-shirts, print some random patterns on them, package them with a hard-to-pronounce brand, and use those thin iron boxes as packaging, won’t the price go up all of a sudden?

These are all trends!

Fashion must be expensive.

In this way, several factories at home can be considered to have new growth points, and they no longer need to be half-dead like now.

"Haha, it has to be you, old Carl. Your suggestion is good. Do you still have enough funds in the account in the United States?"

Although he agreed with Old Carl's proposal, Allen did not want to build a steel plant that was too large, just enough for his own factory. This was called self-production and self-sale.

"Master, enough is enough. I just feel that now is the right time to make the acquisition. Besides, you forgot one thing."

Old Carl stretched out his hand and pointed eastward.

"What?"

"Whether there are any changes over there, or what changes we have been observing in the Gulf region, in short, as long as there is a war, their local supplies will definitely be insufficient. We can already produce canned products, why not delve deeper into Australia and produce them?" Order canned products like kangaroo meat or rabbit meat, and when the price of these supplies increases, it will be all hard currency!"

As expected, he is an old guy and thinks more carefully.

Allen has always looked at these things with a take-no-prisoners mentality.

He always had a sense of anticipation and nervousness that he was about to witness history, but he never thought about making money from these regions and countries where big events were about to happen.

Because he doesn’t know how to deal with Tai Zhengdao.

Now when old Karl reminded him, Allen understood instantly.

Selling these canned food or civilian supplies to those chaotic, unstable, or war-torn areas is a legal business.

And as long as he does it well, he can earn fame, which is good for him.

Thinking of this, Allen narrowed his eyes slightly and glanced at Old Karl.

Old Carl looked at Allen with a look of expectation and sincere eyes, not at all as violent as he was to outsiders.

Allen chuckled and said: "You are thoughtful and gave me a timely reminder. Then after you go back this time, you should start to acquire a few small steel plants. As long as they are enough, try to choose ones with newer equipment."

"Okay, I understand, Master."

Neither of them mentioned anything about kangaroo meat or rabbit meat containing trace amounts of toxins.

You can still die if you drink too much water. These toxins are in trace amounts. As long as they meet food standards, you can do whatever you want.

As for the problem of kangaroo meat being unpalatable, this is easy to solve.

Isn't there still a master Zong at home? Let him find a few cooks and we can study how to remove the fishy smell and firewood as much as possible. It would be good to eat some canned food.

"In addition, you rest at home for a few days, and then you go to South Korea first. The accommodation has been decided. I will take William to go to the Olympics. This time you go with me."

"Oh? Master, that place doesn't seem very stable now."

When Old Carl heard that he was going to South Korea, he instinctively frowned, thought about what he had heard occasionally, and started to persuade.

"It's just that I'm not safe, so I asked you to go to the testing spots first. Besides, I'm going with the participating team this time, and the hotels are all together. Plus you go to the testing spots in advance, so it shouldn't be a big problem."

"Okay, then I'll call the American side and call in some more manpower. Young Master, please do your work first. I'll make arrangements right away."

Since Allen insisted on going, Old Karl did not hesitate, stood up and prepared to make arrangements.

The 1988 Seoul Olympics took place from September 17th to October 2nd.

The delegation will arrive a few days earlier, but Allen doesn't have to go so early. His charter flight leaves on September 14th.

On September 7, after getting up in the morning and finishing his official duties, Allen changed into a car he didn't often ride in and arrived in Cardiff, the capital of Wales, in a very low-key manner.

It's probably less than an hour's drive from the manor.

It is said to be the capital of Wales, but every time he comes to Cardiff, Allen always feels as if he is from the village below going to the county seat.

Anyway, all the cities in Wales are not big in size, even Cardiff is just like that.

In the western suburbs of Cardiff, there is a huge warehouse area, which is the headquarters of Allen's newly established Blue Knight takeaway company.

Whether it's the office area, the customer service area, or even the parking area, it's all here.

After several months of site decoration and employee training, the Blue Knight Group is finally ready for trial operation.

The entire group currently only has a total of 200 customer service staff, 200 drivers, also known as takeaway "brothers," and less than 30 logistics and management personnel.

This is the current status of the entire group.

The trial operation locations were also reduced from the initially expected three locations of Carmarthen Town, Manchester City, and Cardiff City to only Cardiff City.

The main reason is that this large-scale takeout model has never been done before. Allen was afraid that the stall would be too big when the time came.

When he got out of the car, he nodded to the several managers who came to greet him. Allen put on a mask first. He didn't want to make any big noise today, so he simply accepted the results.

On the huge flat-floor warehouse, the blue door is so huge that the cartoon panda logo can even be seen from hundreds of meters away.

A panda wearing a blue vest, with a row of English letters written underneath - The Blue Knight.

Simple and easy to remember.

After carefully looking at the IC card in his hand, Allen felt a little emotional when he saw this thing.

The current IC card has only been invented a few years ago, and the technology is already very mature, but its most commonly used scenario is still for phone cards and the like. Now the company has customized a batch of these cards to be used as membership cards, which looks quite good. High end.

There is no rush to visit first, let’s go to the office first.

"Sir, you see this is the distinguished member service manual we made."

"Um"

Originally, Allen's plan was that ordinary members had to change their cards once a year. There was no handling fee for applying for the card, but they had to pay a deposit of one hundred pounds, which was the membership fee.

But after the membership fee expires, you can return it with the card.

What you earn is this interest money.

After its plan was optimized by professionals, it launched premium membership services on this basis.

This is a higher-end service than ordinary membership.

For example, the process for ordinary members to order takeout is to take a free "recipe" every month. That is, the restaurants or supermarkets in the member's location that cooperate with Blue Rider will take pictures and print out the takeout products they can provide. book.

If you want to eat something, just call the Blue Knight customer service number and order according to the number and price on the brochure.

As for the premium membership service, you need to pay a membership fee of 100 pounds per year, which is non-refundable!

In other words, there is a difference between the membership card of a distinguished member and the ordinary membership card. It is worth two hundred pounds each, and it is also renewed once a year. The difference is that if you want to refund the two hundred pounds at the end of the year, you can only refund half. The remaining £100 is the fee for premium membership.

Distinguished members will receive a video tape every month. The products provided by various merchants that cooperate with Blue Knight in the customer's city will be photographed like TV shopping and displayed on TV with real objects, so that it can be compared. Pictures are more convenient for distinguished members to choose.

And as long as the order is placed by a distinguished member, it will be delivered first!

Although the routine is very simple, it is this extremely obvious difference in treatment that is worth the price.

Anyway, now is the trial operation period, and various things have to be explored slowly.

Allen wore a mask and walked around the customer service area. The scene of hundreds of old ladies standing in front of the phone was quite spectacular.

When it first started operating, there were about zero new customers. The old ladies were very busy, and a few of them were still chatting quietly.

Seeing Allen's gaze, the younger person in charge looked nervous.

But he couldn't help it. The main reason was that he was too idle, and he was a bunch of old ladies. It wasn't that they didn't work seriously, but they didn't have a job at the moment, so they could only chat, and they couldn't just sit around, right?

"Don't be nervous, just get started, take your time."

Allen didn't care. Instead, he kindly comforted the person in charge who was obviously a little nervous after seeing him.

"Let's go to the parking lot and have a look."

These days, there are not many electric cars, and as for small three-wheelers, there are none!

Gas prices are not expensive, and the environment in Wales is not densely populated and relatively sparse. Riding motorcycles is not very safe, so I can only buy a batch of second-hand cars for delivery.

Seeing hundreds of second-hand cars of various brands parked neatly in the parking lot, the scene was quite spectacular.

Looking at these cars, Allen sniffed. Now the stall is still small and not well-known. When it slowly develops in the future, he can choose several car brands and ask for sponsorship fees openly.

Not only do you need sponsorship fees, you also need to sponsor a car!

After checking around the Blue Knight headquarters, everything was normal. On the way home, Allen sat in the car and looked out the window, feeling lost in thought.

The reminder given to him by Old Karl a few days ago gave him a lot of new inspiration, so that some plans had to be changed accordingly.

For example, this Blue Knight takeout group.

Limited by current technology and communication conditions, this scale and convenience will definitely not be as large as ordering takeout with just a mobile phone in a few decades.

Just buying an ordinary membership card worth one hundred pounds will block a large number of customers.

But there is no way, this is a necessary threshold.

Now that the threshold has been established, we still don’t know how many customers there will be in the future. However, according to the estimates of several consultants, in a short period of time, the Blue Knight Group’s profit point will be relatively single, and it may not even be profitable. There will be a small loss.

In this case, you have to think of other profit points to open up the situation.

PS: My back has been hurting for the past two days and I can’t sit still. Please wait for me to take it easy.