Reborn Industrial Tycoon

Chapter 645: It’s great to be a coal boss!

There is only a simple dirt road to the mine, but on this simple road, there are dozens of trucks queuing.

These trucks are all here to haul coal.

Within the scope of the mine, Zhao Jinlong pointed to the mine in front of him and said, "I paid 2 million to buy this mine. A few days ago, someone already offered 50 million to buy it!

In just two years, it has increased a full twenty-five times. I have bought and sold short in Southeast Asia before, but I have never had such a high rate of return! Brother Li, I really admire your vision. You can turn stone into gold.

Not too much at all!

Back then, when you said that coal mines could make a lot of money, I still felt a little guilty. If you hadn't been willing to invest money in it, I wouldn't have dared to do it alone! Now it seems that within three years, we can invest in it.

You can get your money back!”

"Within three years, it is still too conservative. If we improve the efficiency a little, I estimate that within two years, the capital can be recovered, and then it will be pure profit." Li Weidong said with a smile.

"Brother Li, you said that the price of coal is strange. I remember that in the early 1990s, the price of coal also rose sharply. At that time, I and some of my buddies even traded coal!"

Zhao Jinshan continued: "In the past few years, the price of coal became cheaper and could not rise no matter how much it rose. However, this year's price has been rising steadily, and it has almost become one price per day. I am really worried now.

One day, coal prices will fall back to what they were before."

"It should not fall in the next ten years." Li Weidong went on to explain: "This increase in coal prices will be a long-term process, because our country's demand for coal will be increasing.

At the end of last year, we officially joined the WTO. In the future, the demand for industrial electricity will increase significantly, so the country canceled the guided price of thermal coal this year to ensure energy supply. Now coal is completely market-oriented.

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Maybe after a few years, the coal we produce ourselves will not be enough, and we will have to import hundreds of millions of tons from foreign markets every year! Brother Zhao, don't worry, the price of coal will not fall!"

"Importing coal from abroad? It shouldn't be a problem! Our country is short of everything, but there is no shortage of coal. There is so much coal to dig in the entire northwest region, how can we use imports!" Zhao Jinshan said, shaking his head.

"We were also a big oil-producing country back then. Daqing and Shengli also had big oil fields. Now we are not counting on imports."

Li Weidong smiled and then said: "Brother Zhao, don't be too full when you say this. Maybe ten years from now, our Dongshan Mining Group will have to buy coal mines overseas and then transport them back to China to sell!"

Over the years, Dongshan Mining has accumulated a lot of coal mines. Now that the country has canceled the guided price of thermal coal, Dongshan Mining's good days have finally come.

Coal has always been China's most important energy source, and as early as the 1980s, Li Weidong had been involved in coal mine transactions.

When Li Weidong was still in the transportation company, he proposed the business strategy of using transportation as a consignment, and the product sold through transportation at that time was coal.

The transportation company pulls coal directly from Yankuang to the port. In addition to the normal freight, it can also earn a price difference of two to three yuan per ton.

At that time, coal mines were either state-owned or collective. Those large state-owned mines had good technology, large output, and guaranteed benefits. The small rural collective mines had relatively primitive mining methods and basically relied on

Human operation and management are relatively difficult.

Ordinary village collectives do not have the money to invest in collective coal mines, so they simply contract them out or even subcontract them at different levels, which naturally reduces the profit margin.

In addition, triangular debt was rampant at that time, and the coal mining industry was also a hardest-hit area. It was good to get two or three cents back at the end of the year for the money sold for coal in a year.

The coal bosses at that time were not as prosperous as they would be in the future, and were even a little pitiful.

Many coal bosses are either demanding debts or on the way to collect debts. Some people do nothing throughout the year but collect debts. When they are only thirty, they go home to celebrate the New Year, and then go out to collect debts on the sixth day of the Lunar New Year.

At that time, coal miners would accompany coal bosses everywhere to collect accounts. In name, they were accompanying them, but in reality they were monitoring them. They were afraid that the coal boss would run away and the money would not be returned.

In 1993, the coal industry turned around. The country opened up prices for other types of coal except thermal coal, and the coal industry also ushered in its first wave of development.

The years from 1993 to 1997 were the most brutal years for the growth of small coal mines in China. In those years, the relevant laws and regulations were not perfect, and the supervision was not strong enough. During the development of the coal industry, there would inevitably be a lot of damage to the environment, damage to farmland, and even

Some serious illegal incidents.

For example, Bao Qiang's debut novel "Blind Shaft" was based on what happened in a small coal mine of that era.

This wave of good times for the coal industry lasted until 1997. After the outbreak of the Asian financial crisis, energy demand dropped sharply and coal prices fell sharply. The first wave of dividends for the coal industry was over.

Although the Asian financial crisis had little impact on China's economy, in 1997, China was still a net exporter of coal, mainly to East Asia.

East Asia was the hardest-hit area by the Asian financial crisis. At that time, the economies of East Asian countries nearly collapsed, a large number of companies closed down, and the demand for coal naturally decreased significantly. Therefore, domestic coal prices were affected.

Then in 1998, the coal management system was also reformed, the Ministry of Coal Industry was abolished, and the terminal coal enterprises that were originally managed by the Ministry of Coal were also decentralized to local governments.

The entire coal industry is also facing hard times. Most coal mines are operating with debt. The smaller the coal mine, the more serious the debt situation becomes.

Coal mining is inherently hard work, and if it is not profitable, no one will care about it. Most of the people who were still engaged in coal mining at that time were people who really had no other way out.

It was also during this period that both coal companies and coal bosses were selling coal mines at low prices, and Li Weidong's Dongshan Mining was also bargain hunting at that time.

Top mines worth billions, such as Taifeng Mine and Taisheng Mine, are hard to come by. Even coal mines worth hundreds of millions are in the hands of large coal companies.

These large coal companies have the production task of ensuring the country's coal supply, or they have their own coal chemical companies. Even if coal prices fall, they can still rely on the coal chemical industry to make profits. Therefore, large coal mines will not be sold easily.

Therefore, the coal mines that are really sold at low prices are those worth millions or tens of millions.

At the level of village collectives, coal mines worth hundreds of thousands are also sold. Of course, small coal mines of this level will be cleared and sealed by the state in the future.

The coal mine where Li Weidong is now is actually not large in scale, but it can still meet the standards of a medium-sized coal mine, so there is no need to worry about being liquidated in the future.

For coal mines of similar scale, Dongshan Mining has made more than 200 bargains.

There are more than 200 coal mines, which is actually not that many in the northwest.

Later, when the small coal mines were rectified, Shanxi Province alone was not allowed to close down three to four thousand small coal mines! Later, the small coal mines were almost rectified, and in SX Province, there are still more than 700 900,000-ton coal mines.

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This is just Shanxi. In Inner Mongolia, XJ, Shaanxi and other places, the land is wider and the coal reserves are higher.

The hard times for the entire coal industry continued until 2002.

At the end of 2001, China joined the WTO, and the domestic manufacturing industry began to grow rapidly, and at this time the demand for coal was also increasing.

The first is the demand for electricity. The manufacturing industry is inseparable from electricity. High, medium and low-end manufacturing industries all have large electricity consumers. Among other things, just one electrolytic aluminum consumes 12,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity to produce one ton.

China's electricity mainly relies on coal-fired power generation, and the surge in industrial electricity consumption has also caused a substantial increase in coal consumption.

The second is the direct use of coal in industry. At that time, boilers were basically the standard equipment of many enterprises. Even some small workshops with a few people would be equipped with a small boiler, so a large amount of coal was needed.

With the increase in demand for coal in the market, the country also opened the guide price for thermal coal in 2002. At this time, the coal industry was completely market-oriented, and coal prices rose rapidly.

As a result, the price of coal has changed every day. No one knows what the price of coal will be like the next day, but it is certain that the price will rise tomorrow.

Since we know that the price will increase tomorrow, why not hurry up and buy more today to save!

Just like the National Development and Reform Commission announced that oil prices will rise tomorrow, many people will definitely go to gas stations today to fill up their gas tanks.

However, the output of coal is fixed. Even if there is a lot of coal in stock, it is all buried underground. It will take time to dig it out. And when the underground coal is dug out, the price may rise to what extent.

In various coal mines, the debt collectors disappeared in an instant and were replaced by people holding large bundles of cash, begging to buy coal. There were also long queues of trucks pulling coal to the mines.

At that time, many truck drivers were willing to wait at the mine for a week in order to pull a cart of coal, because as long as they pulled the cart of coal, they would make more profit than if they had worked hard for a week.

In 2000, when coal prices were at rock bottom, a small coal mine in a certain village begged grandpa and grandma to subcontract the village's coal mine. The contract cost only 200,000 yuan for 20 years, but no one took it.

However, in 2004, a boss offered 90 million, but the village refused to sell.

Because that year, the net profit per ton of coal was 150 yuan, and this was only a small coal mine with backward technology. Large coal mines with higher coal mining technology and larger production scales had a profit of more than 150 yuan per ton of coal.

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At this price, a small coal mine with a capacity of 300,000 tons can earn 45 million yuan a year.

This kind of small coal mine with a level of 300,000 tons is the kind that every time Shanxi cleans up small coal mines, three to four thousand of them are shut down. One small coal mine makes a profit of 45 million a year, and those four thousand small coal mines are

180 billion!

This is only the output of small coal mines. Counting medium and large coal mines, the annual output is astonishing.

Seeing this number, everyone should know why those coal bosses were so prosperous back then, and why they spent so much money without changing their expressions.

It’s so easy for coal bosses to get money!

The real estate industry in later generations can be said to be a pillar industry, but those real estate bosses were still much inferior to the coal bosses at that time.

Although the output value of real estate is high, the various taxes and fees in the middle are also high, and it takes time for a real estate project to become profitable, which will occupy a lot of funds during this period. Therefore, the profitability of real estate companies is not as high as it seems on the surface.

Many large real estate companies often make tens of billions of profits a year, but when they check their financial statements, they still operate with debt.

In comparison, the coal bosses are obviously much better off. If you dig a ton of coal, you can sell it and you will make money. If you don’t finish digging this year, you will continue digging tomorrow. The price of coal will be higher and you will make more money. No

With so many taxes and fees, there is no need to worry about debt.

The good times for coal bosses reached their peak in 2008. That year, coal prices once exceeded four digits, and coal profits increased several times compared with before.

At that time, the price of coal was no longer one per day, but calculated on an hourly basis. The price one hour before was the same price, but the price the next hour was not the same!

It was also in this year that China began to become a net importer of coal. The price of coal imported from foreign countries was already far lower than the price of its own coal. At this time, it was natural to buy coal from abroad.

It was not until 2012 that, under the influence of the economic environment, supply and demand, and other factors, the coal industry bid farewell to the so-called golden decade, and then entered a new round of operating difficulties.

…

Li Weidong and Zhao Jinshan stood at the entrance of the mine chatting for a long time. At this time, a man came up from the mine and hurried over after seeing Zhao Jinshan.

"Mr. Zhao, you came without notifying me in advance so that I could greet you!" the man said.

"This is Lao Zhang. His family lives in this village. I bought this mine from him back then. However, I didn't have that many people to take care of the mine, so I simply hired him to take charge of the management.

The operation of this mine." Zhao Jinshan explained.

Li Weidong nodded suddenly. With so many coal mines under Dongshan Mining, it is natural that someone needs to manage them, and the person who manages the mines must have experience. After all, this is not just a business, but also involves important things.

Safety production issues.

But with so many experienced managers, where can you find them at once?

Zhao Jinshan used a very clever method. After buying the mine, he directly hired the original mine owner as a manager.

These original mine owners are very familiar with the conditions of the coal mines and also have management experience. They can start working directly without time to get used to it, which is much more convenient than hiring other people.

With Zhao Jinshan's background, the mine owners in these villages couldn't curry favor with him, so when Zhao Jinshan sent an invitation, almost all the mine owners agreed.

Some mine owners also feel that being able to work for Zhao Jinshan and become his pawn is like climbing a high tree and is much better than being a miner.

From this aspect, Zhao Jinshan is still very smart.

Zhao Jinshan asked with a smile: "Old Zhang, this mine is so profitable now, do you regret selling it to me?"

"I don't regret it." Lao Zhang shook his head and said quickly: "Mr. Zhao was willing to buy my mine because he thought highly of me. It's not too late for me to be happy! And now that I am helping you manage the mine, you will definitely not treat me badly.

of."

"He is a sensible person! Work hard from now on. If I, Zhao Jinlong, have a mouthful of meat, you, Lao Zhang, will have a mouthful of soup!" Zhao Jinshan said.

Lao Zhang quickly nodded in agreement with a smile on his face, and even showed a very grateful expression. For him, a local mine owner, being able to have a sip of soup with Zhao Jinshan was already the pinnacle of his life!

Zhao Jinshan then asked: "Nothing happened in the mine recently, right?"

"It's okay, everything is normal! Now that the coal price is good, there is no need to worry about selling the dug coal. It is basically taken away as soon as it comes out of the mine. Moreover, the price of coal is now high, and the wages of coal diggers have also been increased, so the mines are not

Short of manpower.”

Lao Zhang paused for a moment and then said, "It's this recovery rate. It's really too low. With the current coal price, our recovery rate is like throwing away money! It makes me feel bad when I see it."

"How much can the recovery rate be?" Li Weidong asked immediately.

"About 20% to 25%!" Lao Zhang answered.

"So low!" Li Weidong frowned.

Such a low recovery rate is really a waste of money!

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