Chapter 362 - 175: Conversation

Chapter 362: Chapter 175: Conversation

Night.

The moon was bright, the stars sparse.

Outside, insects chirped faintly. Beyond the windbreak, the sound of the rising and falling waves drifted in on the wind, stealing into the night.

After dinner with his family, Jiang Miao joined Shuya in the second-floor study for a heart-to-heart, recounting the events of the past month.

Shuya, in turn, would chime in with news from company headquarters and tidbits about life at home.

When she heard that Jiang Miao had developed yet another new technology, Shuya was already unfazed. However, she was a little worried about his plan to credit her with the invention:

"Ah Miao, I’m worried we’ll get found out. It’ll be even more trouble then."

"Don’t worry," Jiang Miao whispered in her ear, his arms around her round, pregnant belly. "Just make sure you take detailed notes on the technology and the development process I describe, then run through the practical application a few times. There shouldn’t be any major problems. After all, you’re the only one I can trust."

"Oh, you! What am I going to do with you..." Shuya could only agree to it.

After all, whether it was biomining technology or microbial fuel cell technology, both involved microorganisms, namely bacteria and fungi.

And Shuya’s field of expertise was microbiology, so it wasn’t too much of a stretch.

But Jiang Miao was a different story. His publicly known areas of expertise were crop breeding, aquaculture, and specialty feeds, with the medical field thrown in as well.

That was why he had to attribute his achievements in microbiology to Shuya. Fortunately, Shuya had an eidetic memory, and after he’d "strengthened" her, her scientific research abilities were more than adequate.

As long as the couple kept their lips sealed, outsiders would never notice anything unusual.

After they chatted for a while, Shuya suddenly brought something up. "Ah Miao, do you remember that aquaculture project a Norwegian salmon farming company was investing in around here?"

"Oh? What about it?"

"It seems the project fell through. I heard it from General Manager Jiang. He said the company canceled the partnership agreement."

Jiang Miao wasn’t surprised. "That’s to be expected. If projects like that don’t get off the ground quickly, they usually just come to nothing. Not to mention, Europe and America are constantly changing their positions these days, forcing their companies to follow suit."

"But the land for that project was already acquired, and a fair amount of infrastructure has already been built. All that initial investment has probably gone down the drain." Shuya lamented the waste.

"Oh?" Jiang Miao raised an eyebrow, then picked up his phone and dialed Jiang Haibo’s number.

RING... RING... RING...

"Hello, Boss! What can I do for you?"

"Haibo, I need to ask you about something."

"Go ahead, Boss."

"What’s the current status of that project the Norwegian salmon farming company was planning to invest in? Do you have the details on it?"

"I don’t have it on hand. If you need it urgently, Boss, I can make a call. It’ll take about half an hour."

"Okay, look into it and send the information to my WeChat."

"Got it."

He hung up.

Shuya put down the bowl of special nutritional soup she was drinking and asked curiously, "What is it? Are you thinking of taking over that project?"

"We’ll see. If the situation is right, I’ll acquire it and use it as an aquaculture farm."

They chatted for less than twenty minutes before a file from Jiang Haibo arrived on Jiang Miao’s WeChat.

He opened the file and began to look through it carefully.

After reading for about ten minutes, he had a good grasp of the project’s overall situation.

To be precise, the project wasn’t wholly owned by the Norwegian salmon farming company. It was a joint venture with a company from Guan City.

The Norwegian salmon farming company had already announced its withdrawal from the project. As for the Guan City company, although they were in the aquaculture business, they felt overwhelmed by the prospect of a 5,000-mu industrial park.

For the entire salmon farming industrial park, only the land acquisition was complete, along with the partial installation of roads, water, and power lines. None of the other supporting facilities had been built.

Investing in it now would be a huge gamble, with no telling whether it would sink or swim.

After all, profits in the domestic aquaculture industry weren’t very high right now. Even though Jiang Miao had created the low-cost Egyptian Catfish Meal, which had cut aquaculture feed costs by nearly a third, everyone’s costs had dropped. As a result, the market price for farmed aquatic products fell, and profit margins were only about 2–5% higher than before.

Fortunately, the drop in market prices for farmed seafood also stimulated consumption, which in turn allowed the aquaculture industry to continue growing.

However, this also meant that in the coming years, more and more farmers would expand their operations for easy-to-raise aquatic species, and more newcomers would enter the industry.

This made the Guan City aquaculture company hesitant to expand. Without any core technology, they could only raise common aquatic species.

Without core technology, there was no way to quickly recoup their investment.

This was the prisoner’s dilemma many domestic companies faced. Lacking any unique core technologies, they were trapped in an environment of cutthroat internal competition. Their only options were to squeeze employees, force down prices from upstream suppliers, and engage in price wars, all just to maintain meager profits. Some even gritted their teeth and continued production while operating at a loss.

For instance, the photovoltaic industry was a prime example.

So what if their photovoltaic industry was number one in the world?

The entire industry was consumed by cutthroat competition, and profits were pitifully low.

Except for a "cheat player" like Jiang Miao, other companies simply couldn’t escape the brutal market competition and the resulting race to the bottom.

Jiang Miao had his eye on this project because the land was already acquired and had some basic infrastructure in place. Hailufeng Company wouldn’t need to go through the process of land acquisition and building basic infrastructure; they could just move straight to constructing the plant and the aquaculture facilities.