Rise of the Argentine Empire

On March 10, 1953, the senior executives of all factories under Saint Hérés gathered in Bucheng for the overdue annual meeting of '52.

The annual meeting is held once a year to summarize the experiences and lessons of the company's factories in the past year, jointly formulate future development plans, and issue rewards. It has become a routine.

The number of people attending this meeting has more than doubled compared to last year, with several more factories and new faces.

This year, Rheinmetall Military Industry still did not participate, neither did New Argentina Media, Thunder Cross, Delta Security, or Cohen Consulting.

The Rosario Cohen Brothers Company and Bucheng's Prall International participated in the name of the Human Resources Department and the Trade Department.

In general, the annual plan and factory development goals set last year were basically not achieved, and some sales data even regressed.

The main reason was the impact of the Western European economic crisis, the economic depression, and the loss of the French Vietnamese market.

Fortunately, with the continuous financial support of Saint Hérès, production technology has progressed the fastest during this crisis, and a lot of production equipment has been acquired.

The fastest-growing and largest-scale expansion in '52 was Thunder Mining Company. In addition to the domestic Potassium Triangle, it also established two major overseas mining bases in Australia and Bolivia, mining coal, iron ore, and copper ore.

If conditions permit, it can cooperate with smelting companies to produce and smelt metals to obtain higher profits.

Among all the companies and factories, the most profitable is the relatively small Andes Condor Cigarette Factory, exceeding 10 million US dollars, which strongly supported the expansion and development of other companies. Thunder Mining's profit was less than 3 million US dollars because it needed to invest production profits in mining equipment, road construction, and other aspects.

Prall Food and Blue Cloud Shoes \u0026 Clothing Textile were slightly loss-making at break-even. Fortunately, this is only a temporary phenomenon. Saint Hérès plans to develop these two companies well this year.

He plans to promote several new managers. The current management of the two major companies is still developing with a factory mindset, which will only get worse and worse.

Prall Food and Blue Cloud Shoes \u0026 Clothing Textile can exert greater combat effectiveness and profitability, and can also develop a more complete supplier system.

Especially in terms of beverages, Saint Hérès has already planned to launch a Brazilian beverage war and fight against Antarctica Beverages and Coca-Cola. Otherwise, if the market at the doorstep cannot be won, future development will not be good. This is a tough nut to crack, let alone the European market.

Prall Food must evolve to cope with increasingly difficult and complex international competition.

The same is true for Blue Cloud Shoes \u0026 Clothing Textile. The old management personnel are also not enough to adapt to the international market. It's just that the gap in production equipment with Europe is not as big as before, but the personnel management is still old-fashioned, with some rigid tendencies.

The Three Seas Shipyard is still in the research and development stage. The first sample fishing boat has been completed and preparations for the dock and production plan have begun.

Maya Chemical Industry continued to expand its production scale according to Saint Hérès's intentions, while continuing to develop fertilizers and explosives, and introducing the production of pesticides. After divesting the fireworks factory, the comprehensive chemical industry idea became smoother and smoother.

Sean Tader has made rapid progress and already possesses the qualities of a professional manager. This is because he directly squeezed the Redwood Fertilizer Factory to bankruptcy, with some public opinion help from the New Argentina Daily.

Redwood Fertilizer Factory itself had a lot of black material and offended many farms. The organic fertilizer they produced had no effect, and was even mixed with some soil. Under the impact of Maya Fertilizer Factory, it directly closed down, and the boss was also sent in for economic crimes.

Leidun Industry's tractor factory, machinery factory, and motorcycle factory have also been basically completed and have begun mass production. The first customer is Future Agriculture. Future Agriculture has a lot of new land and needs these guys who don't eat grass but eat gasoline and diesel.

Cooperation with the Argentine National Petroleum Company has also deepened. Fortunately, Argentina is not short of oil, and the Argentine Petroleum Company really has the so-called state-owned enterprise disease. A good industry has very little profit, and I don't know if there are too many employees or the corruption is too serious.

Oil and natural gas are among Argentina's richer energy minerals, along with Colombia and Brazil.

For this hen that can lay golden eggs, it has now become a serious burden on Argentina's finances. Last year, the Argentine National Petroleum Company did not make a profit and lost almost 2 million US dollars, which he found unimaginable.

The Argentine Petroleum Company was also sold to Americans and other countries in its previous life for this reason.

The direct reason is actually very obvious. Last December, the Argentine Petroleum Company organized 14 strikes, which seriously interfered with the company's operation and development.

When he saw this, he just sighed. State-owned companies, as an important part of the national system, are now collapsing step by step due to some internal reasons, which is really heartbreaking.

Last year, Saint Hérès's factories and companies continued to maintain a record of zero strikes. In this regard, he is already considered relatively experienced, but the scale of employees is not comparable to the increasingly bloated Argentine state-owned companies.

Future Agriculture can only continue to invest heavily, but it has also engaged in some side businesses, such as grain purchase and sale. This year, Argentina has a bumper grain harvest. Saint Hérès does not lack foreign trade channels. This year, Future Agriculture plans to establish a grain and oil company to do deep processing of grain. It is not very promising to specialize in growing grain.

This was still Nora's suggestion. Nora is doing a good job in Future Agriculture, so she has recruited many Indians.

On the other hand, the cigarette factory does not need too many Indians, and some have been diverted there.

The construction progress of the industrial farm is also good. Many farming families have been recruited, and the strange requirement of encouraging men to work on the farm and women to be responsible for giving birth and raising children and doing housework has been supported by many poor farmers in the north.

Saint Hérès even plans to have awards for heroic mothers and the like. Argentina's north itself is feudal and closed, and the idea of more children, more happiness is also more prevalent.

Thinking about the current vice chairman of the Radical Party, Arturo, whose family has more than a dozen brothers and sisters, and now there are only two or three children in Argentina's cities, such as the Thompson family with only two children, it can be seen that once a generation moves from the countryside to the city, the birth rate is terribly declining.

To have more children, it still depends on the north of Argentina. In the future, land reform can also be developed here to sweep the caudillos into the dustbin of history.

The land population carrying capacity in the north exceeds 50 million people. He will not give up the northern development strategy. If the Radical Party does not support it, then he will use his own methods to change the caudillos' rule over the northern farmers.

With the armed support of Thunder Cross, this goal is not far away. At first, Saint Hérès even planned to launch and organize farmers to resist the caudillos, anyway, he has guns and people, but this may cause national division and war, which is not appropriate.

The La Plata Steel Plant is still under construction. Saint Hérès is watching closely, so he doesn't pay too much attention to it. The good news is that steel and molten iron will definitely be produced this year.

After the trip to the United States, Saint Hérès began to plan to build a professional manager system for each company and factory, which can be said to have never appeared in Argentina.

As it stands, the various factories are severely castrated, which to some extent limits the rapid development of the factories and companies.

After arranging the development goals of the major factories this year, the small goal this year is to acquire a bank.

This will replace the increasingly bloated and complex financial center, which is Saint Hérès's way of controlling the major companies and factories.

In addition to financial and personnel power, Saint Hérès also plans to upgrade it and establish a consortium.

Otherwise, when the company's scale becomes stronger and stronger, it will sooner or later become a monster.

This needs to be sorted out as soon as possible.

No need to rush, we'll take it slow.

Saint Hethrow's 53-year grand plan isn't as aggressive as last year's, making it easier to achieve while granting the management more freedom and autonomy.

This time, the plan also sets higher requirements for these managers. He's not paying such high salaries to support useless people. If they can't complete this year's plan, they'll be dismissed, demoted, or replaced.

If a problem can't be solved, then solve the person causing the problem first.

Besides, the support he provides is more than enough.

......

After the meeting, Saint Hethrow continued to work tirelessly. Dreaming that the factories could develop on their own just by him being a hands-off manager is unrealistic.

He established his own control system, with the three major power systems of personnel, finance, and organization, along with the Falcon's intelligence network for its subsidiaries, coupled with Saint Hethrow's development plans for the factories, avoiding many detours.

Adding up all the factories, large and small, the number of employees is already close to twenty thousand, and that's even before the steel mill workers are fully in place.

Once the steel mill starts operating, the front-line staff alone will need to number around thirty thousand.

When Host transported American tank parts to an industrial town called Rennes, as he inventoried the various parts, it occurred to him that the United States currently doesn't have diesel-powered tanks; most use gasoline engines, and even Germany uses gasoline engines.

He assumed that the tanks produced by the United States during World War II all used diesel engines, and the people at the tank design bureau didn't realize that only diesel engines are the future trend. This is truly a wonderful misunderstanding.

Saint Hethrow also realized that he had underestimated the difficulty of designing the next generation of main battle tanks, at least for a developing country.

An excellent tank engine must have strong low-end torque, a wide torque range, be able to operate normally under large hot and cold temperature differences, and have a long continuous high-load operating time. This is a great test of a country's industrial level.

Currently, most people at Rennes Military Industries don't realize that diesel engines have a more important role than gasoline engines, especially in national defense applications.

Fortunately, he now has a tractor factory and a shipyard, both of which need power systems and use diesel engines.

A diesel engine is an internal combustion engine that uses diesel fuel as fuel. It is a compression ignition engine, and it is often referred to as a Diesel engine after its main inventor, Rudolf Diesel.

For marine, locomotive, vehicle, agricultural machinery, and construction machinery applications, diesel engines are not very popular at the moment, mainly because the technology isn't quite there yet.

Sean from the United States has also connected with Spain. Saint Hethrow happens to be developing Three Seas Shipbuilding and Thunder Shield Tractor Factory.

These three things have actually converged to this point.

Both tractors and tanks need more powerful diesel engines.

The shipyard can currently purchase diesel engines from outside, mainly importing the previous generation of Perkins diesel engines from the UK. Not to mention the high price, the quality and lifespan can't be guaranteed.

But it's still much better than the current Argentine fishing boats.

Therefore, after comprehensive consideration, Saint Hethrow decided to build a diesel engine factory, introducing foreign technology and production lines.

Diesel engines are essential products for developing heavy industry. Currently, Argentina can best introduce several new-generation diesel engine production lines.

The countries with relatively well-developed diesel technology in the world are still the same few: the United States, Germany, and the Soviet Union.

In 1951, the German MAN F8, with its V8 engine's super-large 180 horsepower, became the economic miracle of young West Germany.

Japan's Mitsubishi and Sweden's Volvo, with Volvo being a rising company in the truck field, but currently mainly in the light truck field.

Why is Saint Hethrow so urgent? Because diesel engines are not difficult, and have existed for a long time. Even many backward countries can produce them, and now is a good opportunity for development.

Diesel engines were installed in cars as early as the 1930s, but it was heavy machinery and armored vehicles that truly provided a stage for diesel engines to perform.

Of course, the Americans also realized the potential of diesel engines, and the two camps engaged in a continuous arms race in terms of tank power, which inadvertently accelerated the development of diesel engine technology.

.....

The current diesel engine industrial production lines are not very advanced, which is actually a major benefit for Saint Hethrow, conducive to establishing a catching-up advantage.

At least, even a small country like Sweden has Volvo and can develop advanced diesel engine industry, heavy truck industry, and national defense military industry, proving that small countries can also be world-class.

Even in the twenty-first century, Sweden's population is only about 10 million. So why can't Argentina?

The more crucial factor in Sweden's strong military technology is that Sweden has top-notch technology in the military industry and related industries.

Although Sweden's total population is very small, even about the same as a city, Sweden is a world leader in metallurgy, materials, machinery, electronics, and communications.

Saint Hethrow is not the President of Argentina now, nor does he have the ability to formulate various economic development plans.

His development ideas for climbing Argentina's technology tree are also gradually evolving.

Now it has become starting from the military industry. Compared to basic industries such as steel, mining, and textiles, the military industry involves higher technology content, and military-civilian integration is the future trend, which promotes and improves each other.

Argentina learning from Mexico and Brazil is more about establishing suitable systems, centralized power, and the idea of developing technology, while also needing to refer to multiple parties.

There are not many ways to rise from a small country. The Nordic development model is a major reference. Mexico and Brazil are more of a negative example, representing de-industrialization.

The Japanese model is also a very good development reference, as is the Soviet model, and the small country Swedish and Finnish models.

Now it is walking on two legs, and with sufficient external financial support, it is easy to develop.

Countries like Sweden and Finland also have world-class advanced companies such as Volvo, Saab, Nokia, and Ericsson in later generations, which is very worthy of Argentina's learning.

Sweden even planned to develop its own nuclear weapons and succeeded, developing a delivery bomber, but gave up in the seventies and eighties due to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, which means people have to be sent to Sweden to take a look.

Later Sweden has its own aviation industry, civilian nuclear industry, automobile manufacturing, and the derived military industry, and is a top student among industrialized countries with small populations.

For Europeans, a population of 50 million is the basis of a great power, and Sweden really doesn't have the opportunity to become a great power.

This is a very good partner, a permanently neutral country, without any conflicts, and both introduction and cooperation can be discussed.

This also proves that Argentina can continue to develop and become strong before developing to a population of 50 million. Small countries also have great undertakings.

.....

A few days later,

Saint Hethrow gathered the managers of the tractor factory, Three Seas Shipyard, and Rennes Tank Factory for another meeting.

"Everyone, we need to merge and build a diesel engine factory that belongs to us Argentinians."

In order to reduce redundant construction and adapt to future development, Saint Hethrow intends to independently build a diesel engine factory that does not belong to any company or factory, but will have people jointly researched by the three factories.

"Boss, why don't we make gasoline engines? Aren't they easier to use and easier to make? Besides, diesel engines have many shortcomings, and even fishing boats don't really need diesel engines. The British diesel engines are really not good."

"That's right, gasoline engines are actually very suitable for tanks."

Host also said.

"Tractors are better off using gasoline, it's troublesome to burn diesel."

"Your ideas are limited. Let me tell you in detail why we need diesel engines."