After the goods were shipped, Tao Donglai also hurried to the dock with a group of technicians responsible for installing the equipment. After everyone got on the boat, they set sail and sailed to the open sea, Li Nai was still wondering where the salt works of the Haihan people were hidden, so he heard Schneider say: "Mr. Li, please look, the bay ahead is our salt farm." ”

"So close?" Li Nai was slightly taken aback. He originally thought that since he was going to go by boat, the secret salt farm of the Haihan people would be at least an hour or two away from here, but he didn't expect to arrive just after leaving the harbor.

Li Nai looked at the bay that Schneider pointed out with some doubts, but saw that the coconut trees on the shore were forested, and he couldn't even see the people.

It wasn't until the boat approached the shore that Li Nai noticed a small estuary where laborers were parked in a few small flat-bottomed wooden boats. The people disembarked and turned into small boats, and the laborers rowed the boats and sailed down the river.

The boat had traveled about two miles, and a small wharf appeared in front of it, where Anxi and others from the Yanchang Commune Management Committee were already standing and waiting.

Tao Donglai gave a brief introduction to the two sides, and Anxi greeted him very warmly: "Welcome friends from Guangzhou to visit us! Please come with me, we will talk as we walk." ”

At present, the vast majority of units belong to the production sector, and only a very small number of departments such as culture, education, and health care belong to public institutions that need to rely on financial allocation. Since the Executive Committee proposed the establishment of an independent settlement system, all production departments have been looking for ways to improve production efficiency in order to obtain more profits. In particular, departments such as the military industry and chemical industry, which have access to import and export trade, are even more energetic.

The Executive Committee believes that the production capacity of the salt farm has "played a strategic role" in the development of the entire Group, and has also given sufficient attention and comprehensive support. As long as it is a report typed by Anxi, it has basically been approved by the executive committee, and it requires manpower to manpower and materials to materials. For a product that is in demand like cement, the Executive Committee also provided the salt works as much as possible to ensure that their production and transformation plans went smoothly, which made the military and police departments, which were bent on building concrete batteries, complain a lot about this.

Since its commissioning, the salt production of Yanchang Commune has been rising rapidly, not only to meet the local demand for chemical production, but also to export thousands of catties of refined salt. From an economic point of view, the Yanchang Commune has initially possessed the ability to be self-sustaining.

Of course, given that the wholesale salt price of the Ministry of Commerce has always been kept at a very low level, the actual transaction amount is not large, and the sales profit of the Yanchang Commune is also limited. However, the Executive Committee is still very optimistic about this project, for no other reason, because the sales market for salt is so large that it only needs to maintain the current salt price of 100 taels per ton, which is enough to form a dumping trend on the salt market on the mainland and even in the entire Far East. As long as the sales volume increases, the seemingly meager profits will also become astronomical.

The Management Committee of the Yanchang Commune was also very clear about this reason, so when Anxi learned that there were merchants from Guangzhou visiting the Yanchang today, and it was very likely that they would sign an order for the salt industry, they had already held a preparatory meeting a day in advance. The whole of the salt works was informed, and today everyone must work more seriously, as long as everyone behaves well, and in the evening the two pigs sent from the farm the day before were killed and fed.

"We started building this salt farm three months ago, and it was just a wasteland in the beginning. Anxi raised his hand and pointed to the inland plain in the distance, which had been turned into neat salt pans, and proudly introduced: "Under the leadership of the Executive Committee, the members of the Yanchang Commune have fought hard and transformed this wasteland into the most productive salt field in the entire South China Sea in a very short time!

Li Nai clearly heard the sound of He Qiang swallowing his saliva next to him, this number is indeed too amazing, Cheng Dù is no less than yesterday on the farm I heard that the yield of rice fields there can exceed 1,000 catties.

As for the salt production capacity of the Haihan people, it was also one of the tasks of Li Nai's visit to Shengli Port. Li Jifeng, the leader of "Fu Ruifeng", believes that if the salt production of the Haihan people can really reach a certain scale, then it is also a good choice for "Fu Ruifeng" to open a lucrative private salt trade in the future, but if the output is low, it is debatable whether to take this risk.

As a lesson in advance, Li Nai also learned about the operation of general salt farms, such as the largest salt farm on Qiongzhou Island located in Danzhou Bay, which is known as the largest salt farm on Qiongzhou Island, and its maximum output is about 1,800 catties per day, and it is rare to exceed 1,000 catties. Moreover, the salt factory has been in operation since the Song Dynasty, and all production links can be said to be very mature, and the salt is also passed down from family to generations of skilled hands. But compared with the salt production efficiency claimed by the Haihan people, the output of the Danzhou salt works is more like the result of a group of laymen.

It is not a secret that there are a total of 29 salt farms in Guangdong and Qiongzhou under the jurisdiction of the Guangdong Salt Division and the Haibei Salt Division, and it is not a secret that their production numbers are not true, and Li Nai dares to say that the daily output of any salt farm can be maintained above 1,000 catties.

Of course, Li Nai also thought that the salt farms of the Haihan people would probably be much more efficient than those in Danzhou or other places, and the salt produced could not be fully digested in the local market. Otherwise, they don't need to take the line of Guangzhou, and just sell it locally. But he didn't expect that the salt output here was so outrageously high, 4,000 catties per day, which made "Fu Ruifeng" previously put forward the requirement of at least 10,000 catties per month, which sounded like a joke, not to mention the monthly payment of 10,000 catties, that is, the monthly supply of 100,000 catties, and the Haihan people could afford it!

Li Nai has already begun to calculate in his heart, if the trading volume is increased from 10,000 jin to 50,000 jin per month, then whether the profits that "Fu Ruifeng" can obtain from the transaction can be used to buy two more Haihan artillery.

Of course, before that, Li Nai still has to implement the Haihan people's statement as much as possible, who knows if this surnamed An will be bragging? The salt farm with a monthly output of more than 100,000 catties is in front of him, and Li Nai really wants to see their production methods.

After passing through a row of palm groves, Li Nai saw the true face of this salt pan plain, where there were no stone salt troughs that are customary in salt pans, but huge rectangular salt troughs neatly laid on the ground, each of which was four or five zhang long and wide. The water in these pools is shallow, but only two or three inches or so, and many of the sea salt in the pools have crystallized and spread on the bottom of the pools with white flowers. Some laborers are standing in the salt drying pond, using rakes to gather the dried salt, and then loading it into sacks and transporting it to the designated place.

Li Nai only took a cursory look at it, and there were hundreds of salt ponds like this on this plain, to say the least. The sea salt precipitated in a pool is collected together, and there are twenty or thirty catties to say the least, so it seems that the four thousand catties per day that the Haihan people say is not bragging.

Anthy took them on a tour and explained at the same time. In addition to these harvesting ponds, there are also places where laborers are using rickshaws to lift seawater from the river into the salt pans, and next to each salt pan there is a filter tank, where most laborers work in the filter to mix and press the salty mud soaked in seawater, which is a rather time-consuming and laborious process. After stirring and filtration, the high-salt brine will be put into the brine storage tank next to the filter, and after passing the inspection, it will be poured into the salt drying tank for full drying.

The Executive Committee is not afraid to expose these production processes. This method of producing salt was not pioneered by the public, but was a technology used in the salt works of the same time, and the salt commune differed from the large-scale industrial mode of production, which was not possible in the old salt factories that were still in the feudal production structure. The technological superiority of civil administration and production organization widened the gap in production efficiency between the Yanchang Commune and its counterparts of the era, and this gap could never be bridged by a casual visit.

Li Nai was a clever man who had seen the world, and when he saw the ingenious irrigation devices and the flat-bottomed salt drying ponds made of stucco, he knew that the Haihan people's salt-making methods could not be replicated elsewhere. This is not because the Haihan people used a more advanced salt drying method, in fact, the salt farms in Chaozhou, Huizhou and even Danzhou have long been using the method of drying salt to make salt. The reason why it cannot be replicated is actually very simple, those salt envoys and officials sent to the salt works by the salt department do not care about how to improve production efficiency, what they have to do is to do their best to squeeze salt farmers, and directly assign production tasks to them.

It is obviously impossible to build such a large-scale salt pond in the salt factory without official economic investment, which requires a considerable amount of manpower, material and financial resources to achieve, and those poor salt farmers do not have such organizational skills. After all, the salt factory was set up by the imperial court, and the salt merchant could only buy and sell salt, but if he wanted to build his own salt factory, he would definitely not be able to get the approval of the imperial court.

Li Nai even figured out that the reason why the Haihan people were so fearless in showing themselves the entire process of salt production was because they knew that this set of things could not be replicated in other regions. In addition to secretly sighing that the Haihan people are good enough, Li Nai also has a deep sense of powerlessness, why can't I do these things that don't seem complicated?