Rise of the Argentine Empire

From mid-June, Saint-Hesse continued to increase investment in the development of military industry.

In addition to New Kohn Heavy Industries, three companies were established successively: the state-owned Pampas Shipbuilding Heavy Industry, the state-owned Southern National Defense Industry Corporation, and the Blanca Arms Company, responsible for the research and manufacture of warships, spacecraft, submarines, radar technology, and firearms.

The most outstanding state-owned company management teams were dispatched to take charge of operations, and people were also poached from New Kohn Heavy Industries and laboratories. At the same time, cooperation was directly established with related companies.

For example, Pampas Shipbuilding Heavy Industry cooperated with La Plata Shipyard to develop small surface ships, and Blanca Steel Plant provided various experimental raw materials.

The reasons for establishing state-owned military factories included not wanting to waste the military expenditure used to establish various laboratories, and also to accelerate the development of the military industry. Now that New Kohn Heavy Industries has gotten on the right track and is making a profit, it shows that the military industry actually has great potential for development before the end of the Cold War, and it can also make money.

Originally, Saint-Hesse relied on various imitation firearms to create popular products, but lacked research and development capabilities. After being restricted in channels and facing difficulties in obtaining orders, it slowly began to lose money.

Now, with sufficient capital investment, some new things developed have proven to be very marketable products, and they have begun to generate profits.

Saint-Hesse also established a Military Industry Bureau in the La Pampa Provincial Government Hall, specifically to support the development of the military industry, introducing various policies to alleviate the financial pressure of new enterprises, promote the normal development of the military industry, and encourage small defense contractors to enter the La Pampa military industry sequence.

Currently, the Argentine Ministry of Defense is temporarily difficult to rely on, but the world military industry is developing rapidly, and the colonial independence cause is progressing rapidly, which is of great help to civilian industry, and the research and development of various materials is extremely important.

Moreover, the development of the military industry can promote the development of fields such as avionics, directed energy, electric propulsion, supersonic and quantum physics, even if it's just a little bit, it's enough, and it can also solve a large number of employment problems.

In addition to increasing investment in the development of fighter jets, Saint-Hesse also established the Falcon Helicopter Manufacturing Laboratory for the development of helicopters, which currently still uses imitations of American products, and then uses them for improvement.

The prototype of the Falcon Laboratory is the H-13 helicopter, which is a helicopter developed by Bell Aircraft Corporation of the United States. Saint-Hesse used American connections to smuggle 5 old and scrapped models for reverse improvement.

The H-13 does not belong to any high-tech product, and Saint-Hesse's smuggling routes have not been scrapped, but have been strengthened a lot, from the original various World War II tanks and firearms to the current helicopters, Saint-Hesse has been optimizing and improving the international smuggling channels, starting from the Colombian route, and also developed a reverse smuggling channel.

The aerodynamic layout belongs to a single rotor, the flight speed reaches subsonic, and the number of engines is single.

For Saint-Hesse, with a preliminary industrial base, it has become easier to develop and imitate foreign products.

For a long time, the geographical distribution of the world's military industry has been unbalanced. The vast majority of scientific research institutions and strong enterprises are concentrated in North America and a few industrialized military powers in Europe, especially in the United States and the Soviet Union, the two superpowers.

Saint-Hesse's military factory technology sources have always been mainly the United States. The domestic environment in Argentina does not allow him to have relations with the Soviets, unless he can become the President of Argentina.

The United States is now the world's largest military power, and also the most important source of high-tech national defense technology and weapons and equipment, representing the highest level and strongest comprehensive capabilities of the military industry, which is inseparable from the strong American economy.

The American military-industrial complex has initially emerged, a huge interest group composed of military departments, military industrial enterprises, some members of Congress, and national defense research institutions.

Because the military-industrial complex not only involves the military, but also involves defense companies, and even involves Congress, its impact on the United States is extremely far-reaching.

The Soviets, on the other hand, established the most powerful national defense industrial system in history, and possess the world's second largest military industry today. The military industry in the Soviet Union has still not reached its peak. The importance of the Soviet military industry is far greater than that of the United States. Various famous design bureaus are connected to form a huge military-industrial complex.

Argentina used to mainly establish a limited-scale military industry through technology introduction, imitating and producing some weapons and equipment, and did not have independent research and development capabilities.

Of course, since Argentina integrated its domestic affairs and completed basic unification, it has not had much defense pressure. Its biggest opponent, Brazil, is not prepared to fight Argentina. Today's Chile is not a military power, and the British are still not someone Argentina can afford to provoke.

Whether the military industry can develop depends not only on the domestic market, but also on establishing international trade channels, which can be very good.

In later generations, small countries like Sweden, Singapore, and Israel can establish powerful military companies, which shows that there is absolutely no problem. In addition to the five permanent members of the Security Council, there is still a very large market.

Saint-Hesse hopes to activate the Argentine auto market by establishing joint ventures. Leidon Motors is living too comfortably. Last year, it earned 18 million US dollars just through one Fiat car, which was also the first time it made a profit.

On average, each car earns 400 US dollars, but through various agreements, it is distributed to other parts factories, and in the end, only 6 million US dollars are left. Although they are all brother factories, the accounts are still calculated clearly.

Last year, Leidon Motors sold nearly 45,000 vehicles, exporting 17,000 vehicles, which has exceeded the initially planned production of almost 1.5 times.

45,000 vehicles is already a remarkable number. Although it is still far from the ideal number of 60,000 vehicles, this number has exceeded many countries, and it comes from two versions of the same model, one is a shell like a van, and the other is a sedan version.

The Fiat car project is considered to have recovered its costs.

Leidon's Fiat 600 also has a very high market share in the Argentine market. This is caused by special market conditions. Argentina is very strict on imported cars, but very lenient on exports.

Most of the cars in Argentina come from smuggling, but how many can be smuggled in a year? Less than 3,000. Although Argentina as a whole is not rich, there are still many rich people, and owning a car is a symbol of decency and status.

Although 雷盾 (Lei Dun) Motors doesn't produce many models, they offer dozens of paint colors, and a wide variety of modification kits. This is one of the benefits of having many parts factories. Buying a Fiat 600 and modifying it to look a little different has become an important activity for them, in order to make money.

This has fueled a very popular modification market, and 雷盾 Motors even provides various shells and improved models, although the core components inside are all pretty much the same.

After all, technology is based on changing the shell.

But this only means they're playing around with the Fiat 600; the core components are still those of a Fiat 600.

However, the progress of new car research and development is quite slow.

Copying and pasting production lines isn't a big problem for 雷盾 Motors, but they are severely lacking in talent to actually develop a usable car engine.

雷盾 Motors' cooperation with Fiat is limited to only one or two models. They've mostly mastered the production, but in terms of car design and development, they are still a small manufacturer and need to establish some cooperation or introduce automotive industry expertise.

The Argentine Presidential Palace has planned two major automotive industrial bases in Buenos Aires and Córdoba, with Córdoba being the top priority. American car companies generally choose to build factories there.

It won't be easy to convince French car companies to build factories in Blanca City; they would prefer to build car factories in Córdoba, in the center of the country.

Blanca City has now established a certain scale of basic mechanical processing industry and can already imitate some ordinary mechanical products, but advanced products still need to be imported.

The core of 雷盾 Motors' car production line is the engine production line. Unlike later generations, this can only be used for a single product and cannot be made universal. It is a factory that can only produce a single product.

It is not easy to transform such a production line, as there is a lack of sufficient talent and technical resources.

The development of 阿根廷雷盾 (Argentina Lei Dun) Motors is quite slow. Compared with the rapid development of German Audi, it is simply lagging behind beyond comparison.

There is an urgent need to upgrade the factory buildings. Saint-Jose's first thought is to move a car manufacturing production line over, but this will not change 雷盾 Motors' backward research and development.

雷盾 Motors still cannot fully understand the technology of the Fiat 600, which is quite difficult for 雷盾 Motors, even with the help of the Germans.

Argentina is just like the newly independent New China, without any automotive industrial foundation, if you don't count the car factory in Córdoba.

Such a car, or rather, a sedan, is not a simple factory production line. Strictly speaking, it is called imitating and assembling cars, and most of the parts are not interchangeable.

Even though Saint-Jose started a new car development project a long time ago, the time and money required are not a small number.

A fuel car requires nearly 30,000 parts, and designing a new car means needing to carry out modifications and upgrades.

Saint-Jose has equipped the Fiat 600 project with as many as 57 parts factories, most of which come from companies under the Saint-Jose Group, such as New Cohen Heavy Industries, Maya Chemical, Sean Glass, Philip Industries, and Blue Cloud Group.

Among them, 23 parts factories are newly established, such as spark plug factories, gear factories, and seat factories. 14 parts factories come from New Cohen Heavy Industries, making the biggest contribution, and 8 come from Maya Chemical, producing tires and plastic parts. Together with Philip Industries' 5 parts factories, they barely achieved the output of 45,000 vehicles. The current monthly output has reached the limit of 雷盾 Motors.

雷盾 Motors produced 7 prototype cars for the new project, all of which had various problems. Only with the help of German Audi automotive engineers was a barely usable laboratory established.

Blanca City doesn't have an automotive industry as developed as Turin, and Saint-Jose doesn't want to completely attribute all automotive parts factories to 雷盾 Motors, as this would be too much investment and easily lead to rigidity.

This is Saint-Jose's vision for the automotive industry: to cultivate 1-2 large automotive manufacturing companies while establishing competitive automotive parts factories.

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Speaking of cars, we must mention Saint-Jose's only overseas automotive industry, which is Audi.

In 1956, Saint-Jose spent 8 million US dollars to acquire 70% of the shares of Auto Union, which is about less than 33 million marks at the official exchange rate of 4.2 German marks, a very cheap price.

雷盾 Motors promised complete autonomous management and an investment of more than 30 million US dollars, and allowed Auto Union to return to the automotive industry.

Only then did it successfully defeat other buyers and buy most of the shares of Auto Union.

At that time, Auto Union was at a complete low point.

After financial restructuring, Auto Union set off lightly and demonstrated its development potential.

This year, 雷盾 Motors successfully defeated Daimler-Benz's acquisition plan and spent another 6 million US dollars to acquire the remaining shares of Auto Union. Audi's shares, which had been developing for two years, were worth more, but this was still a very cheap price, only 25 million marks.

As the controlling party, German 雷盾 Motors was officially renamed German Audi Automobile Group Co., Ltd., and its headquarters moved from Hamburg to Munich, fully controlling Auto Union. Auto Union was also renamed German Audi Automobile Co., Ltd.

Last year, Saint-Jose made a large investment of 12 million US dollars from Sequoia Capital in the United States for production line transformation and car research and development, expanding the scale of the Ingolstadt factory.

Saint-Jose also brought the appearance concept of the Audi A6 to Audi, completely conquering the Audi management and R\u0026D team, and quickly started the design work.

Audi continued to poach many engineers from other car companies, further strengthening its research and development strength.

The Audi team, with Saint-Jose's full support, has returned to the automotive industry and is developing very rapidly, not only building new production lines but also establishing automotive research and development laboratories.

This autumn, Audi's motorcycle factory will be completely shut down, and all the production lines will be sold to an Argentine motorcycle company.

At the beginning of this year, Audi received a strategic investment of 12 million US dollars from Sequoia Capital in the United States, and Sequoia Capital therefore obtained 8% of the shares.

After obtaining this funding, Audi built a real new car factory in Ingolstadt.

At the same time, Audi also obtained a loan of 5 million US dollars from Bavaria, and the remaining 10 million US dollars of the Marshall Plan loan also arrived, and the level of funds on the books exceeded many of its peers.

After many operations, Audi has completely emerged from the financial crisis and has officially returned to the automotive industry.

Ingolstadt is a small city located in Bavaria, southern Germany, 60 kilometers away from Munich, the capital of the Federal Republic of Germany. It is adjacent to the Danube River and is an industrial city with tradition and historical significance.

The conditions here are quite good, just like a satellite city of Buenos Aires, and it is easy to recruit more talents needed by the automotive industry. More German engineers are in big cities.

This new factory will become one of the most advanced car manufacturing factories in Europe and will also be the second car factory outside of Audi's Düsseldorf factory.

And Audi Automobile also completely became a fully-fledged automobile company.

With ample financial support, Audi Automobile poached many engineers and management personnel from Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen, BMW, Opel, and Porsche, forming a strong automobile research and development team.

… …

“There's a saying that's quite right: traveling a hundred kilometers, even if you've gone ninety, is only equivalent to going halfway.”

Saint-Hesse did not forget to warn these administrative officials, some of whom couldn't help but smile, at the meeting.

In the past six months, the industrial output value of La Pampa Province has increased by a full 36.7% compared to the entire previous year, with 5 cities achieving a doubling of growth, and agricultural output value more than doubling.

The total has already exceeded the 30% growth target set by Saint-Hesse at the beginning of the year, which means that they can not only receive double the year-end bonus, but also be promoted in official rank as a result. This is the rule set by Saint-Hesse: everything is oriented towards the speed of economic development. Rough economic development is still better than slow, refined development.

Bahía Blanca has officially become Argentina's second largest port and a major import/export trade port, with 14 port areas in the urban and suburban areas, covering an area of 92 square kilometers. The Bahía Blanca Port Company was established to manage it. Last year, the annual trade import and export volume exceeded 58 million tons, mainly bulk cargo such as iron ore and coal.

The three port cities in the south, discussed together, have an economic scale that has exceeded 100 million US dollars, establishing 34 medium and large factories, making rapid progress in port development, and thoroughly uniting with the southern part of Bahía Blanca Bay through railways and highways.

The three port cities have now built 8 docks with 14 berths, utilizing 7.5 kilometers of coastline, including 3 docks of 50,000 tons or more, with an annual designed handling capacity of 19.88 million tons, with most of the investment coming from Bahía Blanca.

In the first half of the year, the three major ports completed a cargo throughput of 11.46 million tons, still mainly bulk cargo, mainly imported minerals.

“Our industrial system in La Pampa Province is not perfect enough, while Brazil's industrial development scale is much larger than ours, and the development of cities like Santa Rosa is still relatively lacking, and the development of some free cities is also relatively backward.”

“Our development goal for the second half of the year is still to accelerate development, and to include the coastal highway in the construction plan, building a dedicated expressway on the basis of the coastal highway.”

Saint-Hesse is very satisfied with the development of La Pampa Province in the first half of the year. Several important industrial projects have been put into production, and a large amount of domestic investment has also been obtained.

The coastal highway can connect the most prosperous coastal areas of La Pampa Province. When the railway cannot create greater transportation benefits, the construction of the expressway has become more urgent.

Saint-Hesse has had enough of the backward Argentine railway. The railway in La Pampa Province is also managed by the Argentine National Railway Company, which goes on strike every few days, seriously affecting the economic development of La Pampa Province.

“We want to build a higher-level road different from the coastal highway, entering closed management, which can more conveniently transport goods and people, and allow Puerto Colorado in the south to quickly reach Bahía Blanca.”

Let the coastal expressway become the economic artery of La Pampa Province, replacing the slow railway, and also make the sales of trucks and cars more popular, and urban population can be dispersed to the suburbs.

“Imagine, it only takes 30 minutes from the Alta district to the Posca district, what a great economic benefit it will create.”

“Now it takes 2 hours from the Alta district to the Posca district, too much time is wasted on the road.”

Although Bahía Blanca has built a large number of roads, these roads are more integrated into the streets, and various traffic accidents are prone to occur at speeds exceeding 30 kilometers per hour, while the speed of the expressway can reach more than 60 kilometers per hour, which can be used for rapid transportation.

“We agree to build the coastal expressway.”

Most people were persuaded by Saint-Hesse, the congested Bahía Blanca will be improved, and the suburbs can also be better developed, relieving the pressure on the city.

The meeting went quite smoothly, and a series of proposals were passed.

After the meeting, this information was sent to all parts of the country. The investment counted in this meeting was as high as 570 million US dollars, involving 17 key projects, which will generate huge benefits.

Some heavyweight old families also turned their attention to Bahía Blanca, they still habitually call it Bahía Blanca Port.

Saint-Hesse welcomes all investments and provides them with a lot of convenience, and this is his purpose. He hopes to bring an investment effect of 1.5 billion US dollars through the number of 570 million US dollars.

The Bahía Blanca City Hall has carried out some fruitful reforms in the past few months. For example, the investment promotion department of the City Hall was split into the Commercial Bureau and the Bahía Blanca Commercial Trading Company, and was completely reorganized to achieve separation of government and enterprise.

The equity design of the Bahía Blanca Commercial Trading Company is held by the Bahía Blanca State-owned Assets Committee, occupying the majority, while internal personnel hold a certain share to encourage development.

The original investment promotion department was too large and bloated, and mixed with a lot of interest entanglements. After independence, the commercial trading company used internal talents to establish eight major trading departments, completed cooperation with large-scale enterprises in Bahía Blanca, earned the first pot of gold, and quickly became one of the five major trading companies in Bahía Blanca.

While lamenting the strong research and development capabilities of European and American countries, Saint-Hesse did not forget to encourage these Argentine local scientists.

“The gap between us and the United States and Western European countries is not as big as imagined. We can't develop worse than the colonies, can we?”

However, Argentina's future development is indeed not as good as these countries that have become independent from colonies. That is a real revolution, not just patching things up.

Argentina's superior agricultural geographical environment is similar to that of France.

Argentina has fertile soil and perfect natural conditions for agricultural mechanization.

The La Pampa Province Department of Agriculture is a key department supported by Saint-Hesse, and also one of the departments with the most funding.

Saint-Hesse also passed a "Green Agriculture Rise Plan" at the meeting. The Department of Agriculture established a large number of extension work stations and agricultural laboratories.

By cultivating and promoting high-yield grain varieties, increasing fertilizer application, strengthening irrigation and management, and using pesticides and agricultural machinery, the yield per unit area can be increased, increasing the total grain output of La Pampa Province.

Last year, La Pampa Province completely achieved agricultural self-sufficiency. The total annual grain output can feed 4 million people, but this is far from enough. So Saint-Hesse purchased and stored a lot more grain, and established a large number of cooperation and procurement contracts with farms in the neighboring Río Negro Province, Buenos Aires Province, and Patagonia Province.

The northern provinces are responsible for Future Agriculture. The farms cooperated with Future Agriculture already number more than 1,000. A large amount of harvested grain is transported south by rail to the port warehouses in coastal cities.