NOVEL NEXT Vol. 1 Chapter 006: Food Plant Launching
Capitalists are profit-oriented! -- Das Kapital
Butler Karl was extremely fast, and the results were pleasant. The owners of eight of the factories are willing to sell.
No one wants to do a business that is not making money. In Austria, where industrialization is complete, flour factories are already a dying industry. The brutal race to the bottom makes it harder for people to keep up with the money.
Ferdinand still left the bargaining to Karl. After all, the old butler's talent in this area made him tremble, with a previous acquisition in the supermarket as proof. Ferdinand himself is really not good for bargaining.
In the end, Ferdinand bought a flour factory called 'Katwipolto' for 18,000 pounds.
The machines and tools were all bought a year ago. With more than one hundred and eighty skilled workers and more than fifty staff, the plant can produce 2,000 metric tons of flour per day with full capacity.
Since they brought these machines back, Katwipolto never ran at full capacity. They reduced their staff to more than 500 people from its peak.
Even so, Katwipolto is barely held in place, struggling to survive, tipping the edge between losses and profits.
Ferdinand is happy with the deal. A new owner always has to bring in a new vibe, and then he renamed Katwipolto.
"Schienbein Food Development Co., Ltd.." It is the new name of the flour plant, a sign of a fresh start. Well, in fact, it is purely a bad joke by Ferdinand, who intends to pirate any famous brand that he is familiar with in the future.
Ferdinand kept the former manager, Wilhelm Schubert. He proves his talent because the flour plant could save its money in the highly competitive Vienna.
In fact, the earliest plant, Katwipolto, still runs very well. He kept well managed inside and out, and costs kept to a bare minimum.
But the sales side is a mess. There is no market, and there is no big dealer, and the products mainly sell to the vast rural areas.
It can't work. As a latecomer, the market in the city has already taken its share. The ability to open up the rural market is also enough to show that the boss has a strategic vision, but sadly it is too far ahead of the times. The rural areas in this era are poor. It is a fantasy to complete the expansion of the rural regions around the city.
But now, with Ferdinand, all is not a problem. Of course, in the short term, the sales of supermarkets are limited, and the rural market must remain intact.
Ferdinand, as the boss, goes to the factory himself and calms the workers. He made a public promise to keep the wages in advance and look at the factory's current state.
In the end, when he saw the poor quality of the bread, he felt pity and told the workers to raise the fee by 20 percent, which gained the support of the workers at once.
After a short time, the factory kept running because workers are cooperative with the staff who sent out as managers.
To improve output and boost workers' morale, Ferdinand offers a scheme of bonuses to Wilhelm.
Wilhelm took it out very fast, which met the reality in the plant bonus scheme and sent it up to him.
Ferdinand is very please with Wilhelm's method. As a boss, he can be kind to the workers, but the case is just the reverse for the managers. Like many bosses who can only good and buy the hearts of people, the manager must have to be evil and save him money.
Wilhelm's plan for workers is to either increase the output on average or increase the overall quality each month from the current state. For each one percent increase in production or quality, the shift to which they are a part will get a bonus of one bag of flour.
This step is good but not costly, the flour is self-made, and the cost is meager. Workers can also take it home simply for their own food, which has the same effect as a direct bonus payment.
Ferdinand also found that Wilhelm still had a basic good nature and tried to give the workers as much benefit as possible without harming his own interests, which gave Ferdinand even more comfort.
"Mr. Wilhelm, you have done a great job with this plan. The workers need a morale boost. How about this, you should go down and count all the people who work in the factory who have many family members. In the future, they can use the factory price and buy the proper rations from the factory." Ferdinand once again has dropped a strategy to buy people's hearts.
"Yes, Your Highness. I'll get right on it!" Wilhelm said with some affection.
The price of flour has risen by at least three-fold from the factory to retail. And flour is a staple food in Europe, reducing the workers' cost of living a lot, which is equal to adding two or three-fold of salary.
Ferdinand's idea was to improve the living standards of the workers as much as possible without harming his interests.
Ferdinand's approach turned out to be correct. As his business grew, the more welfare policies his workers got, the more they enjoyed. When the workers' unions were in force later, his business was always the safest where unions had much less impact.
As time flies, the flour plant is soon on the right track, with output and quality rising gradually. When it came to the final stage, the total output was nearly 30 percent higher, and the quality was 11 percent higher.
And the price he paid was just a few hundred more bags of flour given out each month, and on average, each worker gets two or three bags of flour.
Wilhelm showed great kindness when it comes to bending rewards and gave them full up in the end. However, when it comes to handing out the bonuses, he is quite feckless to change the rewards into small bags. Because Ferdinand did not clearly tell it at the time, and the workers had nothing to say.
These are the size bags designed to adapt for supermarket sales. There are large bags of 50 kg, medium bags of 20 kg, small bags of 10 kg, small pouches of 5 kg, and even tiny pouches of 1 kg that also designed. Of course, on average, the smaller the bags, the higher the unit price.
In the end, Wilhelm is still a little bit humane. He did not put it in the smallest bags, or the workers would want to cry. At present, they have given the flour of 10 kg per bag, which was enough for one person's ration, so the workers took it happily.
In fear of forms messy accounts, Ferdinand kept the finances of factories and supermarkets separate early on as well. Those supermarkets have to pay even for their own purchases and set up payment regarding market prices.
As a result of supermarket sales growth, the flour plant soon began to make a profit. In the first month, it made a profit of three hundred pounds. However, it was not as good as a supermarket.
However, Ferdinand is happy enough. There is a good start, and the factory's capacity is now only a third of the output. They sell many products to the rural areas with little profit. If they can produce and sell on their own, the factory's profits will have much scope for increase.
Ferdinand thinks of the most common trick of the future of business. It is immoral to switch on various bags and make seven or eight brands to choose one. And the same rogue business in later years, the same flour sold at different prices to be very profitable.