Rise of the Argentine Empire

Saint Hérse only provided a little help with this so-called coup.

Rheinmetall's transportation and export capabilities, concealed by Prall International's domestic and international logistics, completed the task remarkably well.

Its concealment capabilities were excellent, allowing it to conduct operations under Biró's nose, with production lines opening one after another.

In addition to the Prall fleet's shipping, Saint Hérse also hoped to establish a rapid logistics group domestically to connect various factories in the interior, especially for cooperation with the two important cities of Córdoba and Rosario.

Currently, the development of Argentina's railways is approaching its peak, and even this "slow rail" is not as fast as some heavy trucks for transportation.

Three super projects are about to land in Blanca, or rather, four; Blanca's land is once again insufficient to accommodate Saint Hérse's ambitions.

These three projects are the Southern Oil Refinery—Ethylene project, the Maya Chemical project in the Western Industrial Zone in the west, which is already insufficient and can only be arranged in the more remote Bosca area, and these refineries and ethylene plants will be followed by a series of chemical plants in the future.

The Rheinmetall—Fiat automobile project will be arranged in the Alta area in the east, setting up a Fiat 600 production line and building an automotive industrial base, which will include rubber tire factories, gear factories, parts factories, engine factories, and a series of supporting factories in the future.

These are all super projects with investments of tens of millions of US dollars, in addition to the rapidly developing Hans Steel Plant—La Plata Special Steel Plant project in the East Port Industrial Zone.

The devaluation of the peso has given Argentina's export processing industry strong competitiveness, and Blanca has risen against the trend to become Argentina's third-largest export base, second only to Buenos Aires and La Plata.

The Blanca City Hall has issued some preferential policies for factories and free port policies, which are all major benefits. It is estimated that the current labor shortage has exceeded 15,000 people, and many factory owners are complaining to the civil servants of the investment promotion bureau that it is too difficult to recruit workers.

The population of Blanca is expected to break through 400,000 by the end of this year, and it still seems sparse when scattered over Blanca's 1,000 square kilometers.

Although this is already very fast, Saint Hérse still feels that development is too slow. After all, once all four super projects are put into production, the number of workers needed by each factory consortium will be in the tens of thousands, which cannot be met by the current labor force.

Hans Steel alone will need almost 10,000 people, not to mention those rapidly expanding clothing factories. About half of the newly established factories are clothing factories.

Even if half of these workers bring their families, these four super projects alone can bring almost 100,000 people, not including the number of people in some supporting factories.

The accelerated expansion of the entire city is imminent, but it is currently impossible to annex more distant free cities. The original towns of Alta and other small towns already have close ties with Blanca and can be accommodated. Saint Hérse needs to find a way.

Saint Hérse hopes to include the medium-sized towns of Ahrichi and Menodas to the west, Bajo Hondo to the east, and Tornquist to the north into the development scope, making Blanca a city with a larger jurisdiction.

He couldn't help but think of the metropolitan area concept in places like the western United States, with the main city as the core, accommodating a large number of small cities.

In fact, the metropolitan area concept is a city cluster, such as the famous Paris metropolitan area in France, with a distinction between Greater Paris and Lesser Paris, as well as the New York metropolitan area, the Los Angeles metropolitan area, and in South America, there are also the Rio de Janeiro metropolitan area, the São Paulo metropolitan area, the Buenos Aires metropolitan area, and the Santiago metropolitan area.

But this is also because most Western countries use the small city hall concept, and they are equal in status and can set up their own councils and manage their own police departments.

The Greater Saint Martin City reform was relatively smooth.

Córdoba Province is sparsely populated and can completely implement city-county integration. After all, the surrounding areas are village-level cities, which cannot be strictly called towns. Integration is effortless, giving Saint Martin City a development space of tens of thousands of square kilometers, making it the largest "city" in Córdoba Province in terms of jurisdiction.

However, Blanca's situation is completely different from that of the original María Town. Blanca was originally a small city hall, and even if it has a large population, the surrounding towns have independent status.

Buenos Aires Province, as the strongest economic province and the most populous province in Argentina, has the most detailed administrative divisions, which also guarantees the status of Buenos Aires Province, just like the United States in later generations, where one province crushes the other 21 provinces, until the capital, Buenos Aires Autonomous City, was separated.

But now, whether it is economy, population, or other aspects, it still far exceeds other provinces and is a super administrative region.

Currently, the provinces in Argentina are ranked with Buenos Aires first, with three development engines, namely the provincial capital La Plata and New Blanca, plus the metropolitan area around the capital, which makes Buenos Aires Province the fastest-growing and maintains a crushing lead.

Looking at the administrative division map, you can see that the division of Buenos Aires Province is very domineering, with the longest coastline in the country.

Strictly speaking, Bahía Blanca is closer to La Pampa Province. Logically, La Pampa Province should have its own access to the sea.

The Colorado River also cuts off a portion of Río Negro Province. Buenos Aires Province has effectively suppressed the development of two provinces with superior geographical locations.

Secondly, Córdoba Province has surpassed Santa Fe Province to become the second largest economic province in Argentina. A monster city like Villa María has emerged, achieving the status of a dual-core city, with its population approaching 500,000.

Recent domestic turmoil has made Villa María a safe haven, and there are also many job opportunities here. The proportion of San José's own factory industries is quickly falling below 30%. Mechanical manufacturing and non-ferrous metal smelting have become new emerging industries here. Construction engineering, food processing, the garment industry, and the chemical industry are all top-notch. The mechanical manufacturing and light industries are also relatively developed.

Mayor Cross of Villa María, with the help of San José, has formulated some new industrial development measures, such as utilizing the advantage of being close to the western mining area to develop copper metal smelting, providing raw materials for Rheinmetall Military Industries, developing mechanical parts processing, providing raw materials for the Rheinmetall Tractor Factory, and a series of development measures such as supporting factories around Maya Chemical.

Villa María now has sufficient finances and has also used these finances to establish several state-owned enterprises, while continuously expanding urban infrastructure construction. It has also established the Villa María Commercial Bank, with San José's local factories investing in shares.

Córdoba Province has been an important leader of local warlords since the founding of the nation, and now it has even greater strength, and the population is increasing rapidly.

The third largest province is Santa Fe Province, with two major cities, Santa Fe and Rosario, but the development speed is relatively average.

Other provinces are mediocre and have not developed much.

Previously, Bahía Blanca illegally annexed three towns and was warned by the provincial government, but they were helpless. After all, these were some small towns with small populations, and these towns couldn't wait to integrate into Bahía Blanca.

Now, Bahía Blanca is taking over public security and developing the economy, which is incomparable to the past. Otherwise, San José would not want to put the factory in another small town.

After all, these three towns are greatly influenced by Bahía Blanca. In addition, San José used some means to achieve a "peaceful merger". The fact is annexation, but San José promised that each of the three districts would set up 2-3 new councilors, increase the salaries of civil servants, and increase citizen benefits, so the impact is not significant.

It has to be said that there is no match for Bahía Blanca within a hundred or two hundred kilometers, even the two major provincial capitals of La Pampa Province and Río Negro Province.

……

In order to develop the Bahía Blanca metropolitan area, San José negotiated with one town after another, using various means.

Everyone is happy to join this Greater Bahía Blanca metropolitan area. These towns, plus some surrounding villages, average about 10,000 people.

This is a more in-depth cooperation than the previous general cooperation.

Finally, the nine neighboring towns agreed to join the Bahía Blanca metropolitan area, and the 《Bahía Blanca Metropolitan Area Cooperation Regulations》 were signed on July 20.

This has brought the scale of the metropolitan area to 8,660 square kilometers, with a total population of 300,000. Bahía Blanca has taken a leading position in the cooperation.

The next step is to slowly connect these towns more closely by building new roads, and then establish deeper cooperative relationships, first turning them into satellite cities.

When the conditions are ripe in the later stage, these 8 towns will be annexed in one fell swoop and become a large wide-area city, and the city area will be expanded again.

In the future, Bahía Blanca will become a large industrial city with steel, machinery manufacturing, chemicals, automobiles, shipbuilding, aviation, and petrochemicals as its main industries, with ten-thousand-ton ships able to pass unimpeded, a comprehensive transportation hub with sea, land, air, and rail development, and one of Argentina's largest foreign trade ports.

……

With the huge domestic demand for steel, San José plans to expand the scale of the La Plata Steel Plant. The current two 1580 cubic meter blast furnaces have been put into operation, and the third 1580 cubic meter blast furnace is under construction. The production capacity of the three blast furnaces when fully put into operation will just reach San José's plan when he founded the La Plata Steel Plant, with a steel production capacity of 4.8 million tons.

Moreover, the La Plata Steel Plant has achieved profitability and is preparing to repay some loans.

At the beginning, La Plata Steel Plant issued company bonds of 10 million US dollars, bank loans of 20 million US dollars, self-raised capital of 10 million US dollars, military Blue Faction investment of 3 million US dollars, and revolving capital of 5 million US dollars, with a total investment of 48 million US dollars, with the goal of building a steel plant with an annual output of 5 million tons.

Now the steel plant still has 10 million US dollars of construction funds left, which has been used to build the third blast furnace and special steel plant. The profit from selling steel is already 8 million US dollars, and it has also earned about 6 million US dollars from helping domestic steel plants build.

The military Blue Faction, represented by Little Thompson and others, has already been repaid, with a total of 3.5 million US dollars in principal and interest in two years, which can be called huge profits, some of which are transfers of benefits, and some relationships are managed with the military, which is why the La Plata Steel Plant can withstand the pressure.

The issued bonds will begin to be repaid this year, and the bank loans will begin to be repaid next year. 10 million US dollars of the bank loans were acquired by Balvanera Bank and converted into equity, which means that the La Plata Steel Plant now has less than 25 million US dollars in debt.

In fact, the cost of building two major blast furnaces and converters and other supporting facilities has dropped a lot, and the domestic production capacity has been improved. The third blast furnace is completely domestically produced, which greatly reduces construction funds.

San José plans to build two more 1580 cubic meter blast furnaces to further expand the production capacity, so that the La Plata Steel Plant's production capacity will increase by another 3.2 million tons, reaching a scale of 8 million tons, becoming one of the largest steel plants in the world.

The Hans Steel Plant in Bahía Blanca has now reached its limit, and there is no need to expand it further.