Rise of the Argentine Empire

With the full support of Horst Koch, Saint Hesser's capable assistant, New Cohen Heavy Industries gradually recovered and achieved its initial strategic development goals of focusing on the three core areas of military industry, automotive components, and heavy truck manufacturing.

Horst himself is also extremely capable. The nationalization of Rheinmetall Military Industry essentially wiped out three or four years of effort in one fell swoop. He remained calm in the face of this crisis. Apart from a few senior managers who were attracted by the advantages of state-owned factories, most of them closely followed him. The core personnel of each factory, especially the important German technical staff, were mostly brought to the new factory by him, demonstrating outstanding crisis management skills.

In fact, these Germans didn't have many good places to go. Although the Argentine government helped them migrate to Argentina in the first place, it was also to escape hardship. Finding a good protector is not so easy, so basically all the German employees of the old Rheinmetall Military Industry joined New Cohen Heavy Industries.

Saint Hesser was responsible for providing them with various protections. The tolerant development environment of Blanca City was very attractive, even better than Buenos Aires. Strikes and political activities were very rare here.

The current Austrian government is not the Austro-Hungarian Empire of the past, so the Austrian government is very happy to approve this investment, and even helped negotiate to reduce a lot of money, and also agreed to send engineers to the new truck factory, not only introducing complete vehicle technology, but also including key assembly technology, which is generally cheaper than the Fiat car project.

The new truck factory is called Cohen Heavy Truck Factory, producing Cohen brand trucks, which belongs to New Cohen Heavy Industries. Moreover, Steyr Truck also gave a military truck technical drawing as a generous thank you to New Cohen Heavy Industries.

41 million US dollars is equivalent to half a year's fiscal revenue in Austria, and Horst does not simply purchase truck technology, but also introduces a large number of Austrian heavy artillery, light weapons, and metal material technologies. The total order amount exceeds 55 million US dollars, of course, most of them are secret orders.

Although Austria's current population is less than seven million, it does have a lot of good things, which is a very suitable object for learning for Argentina, which is behind in the mechanical industry.

The Cohen parts factory is second only to the German Automotive Alliance Company in importance among Leiton Motors' outsourcing companies. Last year, it provided nearly 20 million US dollars of auto parts to Leiton Motors, obtaining a lot of orders.

The military factory development of New Cohen Heavy Industries has also embarked on the right track. In the name of the Pampas Defense Force, Saint Hesser purchased a large number of New Cohen Heavy Industries' products and promoted them to the Neuquén Defense Force and the Río Negro Defense Force. Although these military orders do not make too much money, the total orders once approached the procurement amount of the Ministry of Defense. The Ministry of Defense had to greatly reduce expenditures due to Argentina's fiscal contraction.

A large amount of capital turnover also allows the military industry department of New Cohen Heavy Industries to have considerable cash flow.

It can be fully developed. The tank factory is preparing to design a land combat vehicle, and with the auxiliary support of truck technology, the tank factory can further optimize the design, as well as high-energy metal materials and diesel engines, which are of great help.

The newly established La Pampa Institute of Technology is the most valued among Saint Hesser's universities. The university is built according to the scale of La Pampa University of Technology, located in the prosperous area of ​​Achiri District, covering an area of ​​1,200 acres. Each major has at least 1 laboratory, and has recruited many outstanding students. The tuition fee of the engineering college is very low, but the subsidies are very high, because the number of admissions is small, and the admission score is even close to that of the National Southern University.

Many majors are related to military and mechanical industries, and have received a lot of research and development funds. Five or six laboratories have been established, such as the light weapons development laboratory, heavy truck laboratory, and shell laboratory, which can also help Rheinmetall Military Industry improve its research and development capabilities.

This time, Leiton Motors Company, as a brother company of New Cohen Heavy Industries, has also supported a lot of technical personnel.

Now Leiton Motors Company can be regarded as the industrial company with the highest sales in Argentina, surpassing Maya Chemical, Argentine National Petroleum, Southern Petroleum, and La Plata Steel Plant.

The booming car sales have allowed Leiton Motors' sales scale to continue to break records, accounting for 70% of the Argentine auto market. The remaining share is taken by imported cars. Leiton Motors is now really hard to find a car. These funds have also become one of Saint Hesser's most stable cash flows, second only to Barron Bank.

With the popularity of automobiles, the city of Blanca began to transform into a city on wheels. Motorcycles from Philip Industries also became hot sellers due to their high cost-performance ratio. For those who couldn't afford cars or motorcycles, they could opt for the Fritz brand bicycles from New Cohen Heavy Industries, which were quite affordable.

Blanca's well-established basic industries provided cost-effective raw materials for the production of automobiles, motorcycles, and tractors. The prices of steel, plastics, and automotive glass were the lowest in Argentina, and the huge demand further stimulated these industries to increase production.

Driven by orders, Blanca's non-ferrous metallurgy industry also began to develop. Alongside the crude processing at the El Pachón Copper Mine, several non-ferrous metal smelters and hardware processing plants emerged, supplying stainless steel to Blanca's steel mills.

Regarding other metals like silver and copper, San José also had some small processing plants, mainly producing and smelting precious metals mined by Thunder Mining, storing them for the Barren Bank.

Blanca's machinery processing industry was a key area of support. Initially, it mainly focused on producing auto parts for the Raytheon Motors-Fiat project, but later expanded to the entire machinery industry. It generally followed a five-year tax exemption policy, and there were also subsidies for companies that met the turnover and worker number standards, attracting a number of foreign companies to invest and build new factories in Blanca.

Blanca's business environment could be considered extremely excellent. Besides tax and factory rent reductions, the city hall was also known for its fairness and integrity.

Some local civil servant families were broken up to prevent monopolies. Local bullies were also suppressed by San José. With a large influx of outsiders and consistent policies and regulations, it was a good place for many oppressed companies to go.

The massive scale of Blanca's steel industry was a major attraction for machinery factories. Although the scale of Hans Steel and Blanca Steel couldn't compare to La Plata Steel, the overall business environment here far surpassed La Plata.

Many Argentine businessmen had a bad impression of La Plata because they weren't very friendly to outsiders, whether civil servants or citizens.

They didn't welcome noisy, polluting factories, while Blanca had no such discrimination.

…

Raytheon Military Industries, which had been nationalized, was reorganized into the Argentine Raytheon Military Industrial Group. Under the leadership of the Ministry of Defense, Raytheon Military Group was given a very capable new leader: Isaac Tarde, a former internal manager at Argentine Petroleum. He had previously led the construction of Argentine Petroleum's chemical plants and had a strong background, rumored to be the nephew of the new president.

The state-owned Raytheon Military Industries began to resume normal production and research and development, strictly limiting the loss of technical talent by increasing salaries. Several state-owned military research institutes were also merged into Raytheon Military Industries. With the support of the Ministry of Defense, many officers were removed, and it gradually returned to being Argentina's most powerful state-owned arms supplier.

Although Isaac Tarde was young, only 29 years old this year, his management skills were quite good. He not only restored many of Raytheon Military's systems but also promoted a group of new talents. Despite being heavily poached by New Cohen Heavy Industries, he managed to restore research and development work, even strengthening it by merging in several military laboratories.

In the eyes of many relatives and friends, Isaac was an absolute genius. From the age of five, he showed amazing learning and comprehension abilities, was energetic, and his interests were reading and sports. He was a good football player, having played on his high school team. Isaac had a wide range of interests and could often raise his own doubts and insights about books. He was fluent in Spanish, German, English, and Italian.

While studying at the Argentine National Military Academy, he even led his team to win the third place in the university football league.

Many of those who work in the military industry in Argentina are outstanding people. It used to be an industry with no future, so they had to be either patient or geniuses among geniuses. Many have participated in the research and development of Argentine military aircraft and tanks, and some have even participated in the research and design of atomic and hydrogen bombs.

San José coveted these talents, but they looked down on the former Raytheon Military Industries. Now, they have their wish.

When these technical personnel saw Raytheon Military's blueprints, they could directly start optimizing them.

Many Argentine firearms and tank design engineers were limited by Argentina's weak mechanical processing equipment and raw materials, especially steel, and could not fully demonstrate their strength. Old Raytheon Military happened to be good at this.

The combination of the two produced amazing power.

Old Raytheon Military and New Cohen Heavy Industries began a series of overt and covert struggles in the military industry, engaging in a great deal of competition.

At least in San José's view, this was a good thing.

Previously, Raytheon Military basically dominated the industry, and the development of various weapons was not very good, even after purchasing a lot of new technology. Now, with competitive pressure, the development speed of New Cohen Heavy Industries has also accelerated.

Cohen Heavy Industries designed an infantry fighting vehicle called TAM-56, an improvement derived from the former main battle tank project. With the tank project restarted, the tank design bureau, which initially had 200 tank design engineers, was greatly reduced in size.

Now, using the same tank chassis to optimize it, they have created an infantry fighting vehicle with lower prices and armor requirements.