When the Saint comes, she does not collect food

#506 - sugar!

"This is sugar? It doesn't taste right." Loulouse pinched another bit and put it in her mouth. "This taste... wow, that's pure."

The evening wind fluttered the curtains in the second-floor tearoom as the three leaders from the Langsand County area gathered around a small table.

They each pinched a bit, savoring it carefully, and expressions of delight appeared on their faces.

It was so sweet. You see, even the purest brown sugar on the market had a hint of bitterness and cloying sweetness.

But this sugar was as dense as cashmere, melting in the mouth, and if you didn't taste it carefully, you could barely detect the faint taste of impurities.

Bakers and pastry chefs would go crazy for this sugar.

Loulouse and Ludwig exchanged glances, making no secret of their surprise and curiosity.

"Where did you get sugar this white?"

Although Loulouse was surprised by the whiteness of the sugar, if you looked closely, you would find that this so-called "white sugar" was actually slightly yellow.

In modern processes, there are two key steps in refining white sugar from raw, black-red cane sugar syrup.

The first is decolorization, which involves using activated carbon and decolorizing agents to remove the color, or chemical impurities, from the brown and black sugar.

The second is separating the molasses, which involves physically separating the molasses, as an impurity of sucrose, from the real granulated sugar (pure sugar), using a centrifuge.

Horn couldn't complete the second step, so he could only produce a simple version of white sugar, or rather, yellow sugar.

But this was already infinitely better than the brown and black sugar sold on the market.

As early as a year ago, when Horn was still living under someone else's roof in Jeanne d'Arc Castle, he accidentally discovered a method for making white sugar—the Slime Sugar Drenching Method.

At the time, he didn't think he could operate this method himself, so instead of keeping it to himself, he planned to sell it to a big shot in exchange for start-up capital.

He never expected that as time went on, he would become the big shot himself.

"We call this white granulated sugar, or yellow granulated sugar." Horn snapped his fingers, asking someone to bring two more plates of black and brown sugar. "It's a brown sugar refining method I developed."

"Are you saying you're going to make money from this?" Loulouse was forty-one years old, at an age where she was particularly fond of sweets, and she kept eating the white granulated sugar from the plate.

Horn wanted to remind her to watch out for cavities, but he held back. "What do you think we should price this yellow granulated sugar at?"

"15 dinars?"

"Wrong, 12 dinars. No matter how high or low the price of brown sugar is, I will sell it at the highest price on the brown sugar market."

"Why?" Ludwig clearly didn't understand the logic, but he wasn't ashamed to ask the young man.

"First, our production costs are much lower than theirs. The goal is to ensure internal economic circulation, and the profit requirements are not so insane.

Second, in this way, we can defeat the Empire's high-end sugar market and acquire controlling shares in sugar workshops and sugar and oil shops through the Palace-Owned Holding Company and the Fran Trade Company.

Then we can monopolize the Empire's high-end sugar market, forming a sugar trust. At that time, we will have the pricing power. Monopoly is the most profitable."

This proposal was put forward by Catherine at an internal seminar, and she guaranteed that the Holy Maiden Bank could operate this trust well.

For Catherine, she had done this kind of thing many times in Rapid Falls City.

"So you mean, use grain to exchange for brown sugar from Black Serpent Bay, refine and process it in Langsand County, and then sell it to Fran through Kasha County?" Ludwig's eyes lit up.

If this was true, then Kasha County's problem would be solved for the most part.

Sugar, like spices, is a hot commodity in the Empire's market.

Although not as hot as spices, it is definitely ten or even nine times easier to sell than grain.

As for profits, the Megretti Merchant Guild had even sent specialists to investigate and research.

Horn himself had bought sugar on the market. Even the most basic black sugar, at a wholesale price of about one pound per bag, cost 2 to 6 dinars.

As for refined brown sugar, it was even more expensive, about 10-12 dinars, and the further inland you went, the more expensive it became.

A gallon (about nine pounds) of grain was only half a dinar to one dinar, which meant that one pound of sugar was equivalent to hundreds of pounds of grain.

If you were frugal, hundreds of pounds of grain would be enough for a family to eat for a month.

According to Catherine, most of the sugar was imported from the Clove Corridor and Golden Horn Bay in southern Fran.

But these two places did not produce sugar. The real production areas were two: the Flesh and Blood King's Court in the west and the Green Dragon Forest Sea area.

The Flesh and Blood King's Court could produce brown sugar, while the Green Dragon Forest Sea could produce black sugar. Currently, 90% of the sugar on the market came from these two places.

Black Serpent Bay was northeast of the Green Dragon Forest Sea. Geographically, the two could even be considered the same area.

Since the Green Dragon Forest Sea could produce sugar-producing crops, why couldn't Black Serpent Bay?

The only question was, what exactly was this sugar-producing crop?

If this problem wasn't solved, then everything before was just empty talk, but Horn believed that this crop that could produce so much sugar couldn't be on a small scale.

So it must be a not-so-rare organism.

"I also asked the Flame Rose Society and Catherine, and they don't know what the source of this sugar is?" Horn turned his body and looked directly at the white-haired twin-tailed loli in front of him.

The white-haired loli frowned, thought for a long time, and then opened her mouth:

"Although I don't know what it is, I can roughly guess, no, I think it's this."

Loulouse spat out a string of strange syllables.

Horn didn't understand and looked at her in confusion.

The newest novels are first published on Liu Jiu Shu Ba!

She then explained: "This is the native language of the Black Serpent Bay people, meaning sweet tree. This is a tree that matures in three to five years, but the branches and leaves contain sweet water.

The natives cut down the branches and leaves, wrap them in cloth, and beat them with stone hammers.

After filtering out the wood shavings and impurities, they can get fresh sweet water.

After the sweet water dries, there will be a layer of black-red solid, which should be the brown sugar and black sugar you are talking about."

After speaking, she tasted the brown sugar and black sugar in the plate: "Yes, that's the taste."

"Then the Black Serpent Bay people can drink sugar water every day, why are they still starving?" Ludwig was a little puzzled.

"This tree is very hard, who has the teeth to chew it? You have to put it down first and grind it with a stone mill before you can get sweet water.

This sweet water burns your throat after drinking it, and it will cause diarrhea if you drink too much. It's not like no one has tried to use it as a staple food.

But in the end, we found that our stomachs would still be hungry, and people would feel weak and unable to hammer the sweet tree branches, and then slowly starve to death."

Spitting out her tongue, disgusted by the brown sugar, Loulouse patted the sugar powder in her hand, took a sip of black tea, and nestled into the soft chair.

Horn laughed. Drinking too much sugary water every day without supplementing other nutrients, it would be strange if they didn't get sick.

But the sweet tree branches they picked could be exchanged for grain, and eating this grain would not cause them to starve to death.

10 pounds of sweet tree branches can produce 2 pounds of black sugar, which can be exchanged for a month's worth of rations. The Black Serpent Bay people would definitely be willing to do it.

"What is the yield of this sweet tree? How many sweet tree branches can it produce each year? How many sweet trees can be planted per acre?" After writing in his small notebook, Horn looked up again, impatiently asking.

"Including the leaves, each tree can probably produce 30 or 35 pounds? Anyway, it won't be lower than this number. This thing grows fast and grows back in half a year.

As for per acre, I haven't calculated it, about three or four hundred trees? I have to wait until I go back to calculate this."

After writing down a number on the manuscript, Horn turned his body to Ludwig.

"Dean Ludwig, about how many tons, I mean, how many dans of grain do you export to the Leia Church each year?"

"I haven't counted it carefully, but it should be around 2.5 million dans."

Horn silently calculated in his heart. 2.5 million dans is about 130,000 tons of grain. Adding the 80,000 tons of grain from Langsand County, it is 210,000 tons.

According to the price ratio of grain and black sugar, Black Serpent Bay needs to provide raw materials that can produce 4,200 tons of sugar.

"4,200 tons, converted into black sugar is more than 80,000 dans, about 8 million pounds of black sugar." Horn turned to Loulouse again, "Can you produce so much black sugar? Do you have so many sweet trees?"

"The area of Black Serpent Bay is twice that of Thousand River Valley, and two-thirds of it is forest. One acre of land has tens of thousands of pounds of sweet tree branches a year, what do you think?" Loulouse asked rhetorically, "I want to ask, do you have the ability to process these 4,200 tons of black sugar?"