Chapter 170: The Geologic Survey
Translated by me, edited by drpetro.
“This is limonite, an ore made up of 40% iron, which is basically worth mining.”
Why would Ye Qing, who was only focused on charging forward, care about what color the surface behind him changed to?”
Only upon hearing what this metal specialist just said did Ye Qing curiously exit down from the cockpit pit of the Colossus.
“*Inhale* …… “
Under the illumination of the search lamps on top of the cockpit, Ye Qing now saw clearly just what the ground revealed by the Colossuses looked like. It was as if it had been completely graffitied by a master artist with pockets of brown clouds that actually looked like some sort of pattern.
With a touch, an ice cold metal sensation had Ye Qing recognize that these rocks in front of him could actually be steel smeltable limonite ore.
It really was luck doing its thing here.
Iron ore generally distinguishes its iron content with its color.
Those iron ores imported from Australia and Brazil, as well as other famous mines, would generally all look grey. These ores can be immediately used as iron with no need to purify them.
This colour only belong to those metal rich ores that contained more than 60% iron.
Although those ores had some pretty steep prices, the cost to purify them was relatively cheap.
China has a lot of iron deposits, but the majority of them were all low grade ores. Moreover, many of those deposits were all accompanying ores, just like the limonite ore in front of Ye Qing. Due to having been under damp surroundings for long periods of time by being near the sea, it had become moist and includes many other impurities, which created a major problem for regular steel factories in extracting the iron from the ore.
This was also why only now could Ye Qing finally confirm why the Dragon Creek Beach area was so barren.
Because there were just too many minerals here. For example, the high concentration titanium mine underground, and the basically exposed limonite ores on the surface.
Since the earth here contained this much metal, it naturally resulted in low level of vegetation, and then there was also the decades worth of factory waste sewage piled up nearby.
“Boss, we have special refining methods for refining these minerals. If we were to smelt it ourselves, then we can produce steel that far exceeds those on the open market.”
Refining ores is a trade of much importance. Of course, there was no way that Ye Qing would doubt the abilities of the metal specialists. Furthermore, now that he had found a reasonable minable exposed iron mine, he had no excuse to not buy it out and let the metal specialists refine even better steel.
That’s right — to buy it all out.
The underground titanium ore wouldn’t be found no matter how Ye Qing used it, but this exposed iron ore was definitely going to be found, which meant reporting this finding to the Ministry of Land and Resources, and applying for a mining licence.
Ye Qing once again climbed up into the cockpit and called into the walkie talkie: “One Two Three stop, turn around and follow me to create the space for the new factories and unloading dock.”
When this deposit was reported, the ministry would definitely send a team to survey its concentration and size, which was why Ye Qing decided to wait until they had completed their survey before replanning the layout of the new expansions.
There was a 1500 meter distance between the factory gates and the start of the iron deposit, and Ye Qing believed that the surveying team wouldn’t bother to check the surrounding hills because they actually all belonged to him.
It wasn’t like they were going to come probe his factory activities just for some not really worth it mining iron deposit.
Ye Qing’s factory right now was in total only worth a couple billion. So long as he had paid his taxes, no one from central was going to come looking for trouble. To disrupt a factory’s manufacturing just for some barren deposit, wasn’t that just like losing big to win small?
When in the future, the scenes where Ye Qing would need to pay tens of billions in taxes annually would be quite something.
……………………
In the morning of the next day, Ye Qing immediately gave the Ministry of Land and Resources a call saying how he found a limonite ore deposit during construction and didn’t know how big it was, so quickly send someone to check.
As soon as they heard it was limonite ores and at the Dragon Creek Beach, 20 minutes after reporting to the call operator, the Vice Chief of the ministry personally gave Ye Qing a call.
When Ye Qing bought out the usage rights of the desolated land that was the Dragon Creek Beach, it made many of the directors in the ministry happy for some time. Now that they got a call from Ye Qing saying that he found a patch of limonite deposit, they naturally needed to check in with Ye Qing’s opinion.
At the same time, this Vice Chief was somewhat puzzled. Currently, there hasn’t been any reported findings of mineral patches that were worth mining near Zhongyun.
Typically when a company finds a batch of minerals during construction, they would just act as if it didn’t exist and continue on.
So why was there a report this time?
Doesn’t the presence of the surveying team of the ministry hinder his factory’s construction plans even more?
“It’s like this Chief Sun. My Monster Heavy Industry is currently in need of large sums of steel. If the deposit size here is actually ok, then we might look to buy out the mining rights.”
“Oh okay, no problem, no problem. I’ll immediately send the nearest surveying team over to check.” Hearing that Ye Qing might want to buy the mining rights, this chief finally understood.
Under normal circumstances, if they didn’t want to mine it, then there was no boss that would go directly looking for trouble.
But Ye Qing was interested in this deposit, so he could only report it.
Hanging up the call, Ye Qing, while drawing some rough sketches, was also talking with the company’s 10 C.A.D. designers to produce C.A.D. drawings of the sketches he was going to upload.
Ye Qing wanted electronic drawings of all the current construction projects, so naturally these time consuming works were handed down to his subordinates.
As for the actual work of factory expansion, after Ye Qing got his dose of the Mechanical Colossus, he left it all to the ten newly hired peons and master artisans.
At 10 AM, the geology surveying team of Zhongyun arrived at the Dragon Creek Beach in two pickups and two cargo trucks.
Huanghai Avenue acted as the divider for two completely different scenes. On the Dragon Creek Beach side, it was all rocks and desolate land. Yet on the other side of the road, it was a wonderful sight filled with beautiful and lush trees.
When Ye Qing came out to meet the surveying team, he suddenly thought of a problem.
When Huanghai avenue was being built, it definitely needed foundations to be dug, so then there couldn’t have been iron deposits under there.
There wasn’t any near his factory as well, but normally iron deposits were always spread out across a large area, so maybe a part of the deposits was buried under the nearby ocean.
When Ye Qing got to the wasteland, the twelve man surveying team had all gotten out.
People who regularly work in the wild all had something clearly in common — they were tanned to the extreme.
These people weren’t different either, as all them had a tanned and weather-beaten face. And from their looks, they were actually quite spirited and enjoyed what they do.
Having gotten over the greeting and formalities, Ye Qing first invited them to his office for some tea.
“President, you’re too nice.” The team lead who shook hands with Ye Qing had a navy blue vest on and a set of binoculars hanging from his neck: “Before we came, Chief Sun had already informed us to do this asap and to not trouble you or your factory.”
“So we won’t trouble you any further, and you don’t need to look after us.”
“Alright then. I’ll have someone prepare two tables of food and drinks for you guys when you are done. And please, don’t be too courteous with me, you guys are actually helping me here.”
“Sure ~ thank you!” The man didn’t turn down Ye Qing courteous offer of food.
And just like Ye Qing predicted, the surveying team, while drilling, also got half meter deep samples from all directions for examining.
But this sampling range stopped before the pathway to the factory.
Originally, Ye Qing still had worries that they would come to the hills and take sample from there. So while the team was busy drilling for samples near the pathway, Ye Qing got his answer. Even though the hills might contain some deposits, there was just no point in mining it.
The construction of any mine required a huge volume of heavy equipment.
Those hills, even if they contained iron deposits, were still not worth investing the manpower and resources to mine.
What’s more, Ye Qing’s factory was right there. If they were to drill for samples on the hill, then wasn’t that just troubling the production of the factory?
And just like how quickly the surveying team came, the rough results of the samples taken also came out quickly in the afternoon.