Carrying a Jurassic on me-Chapter 1275 - 627 The Problem with the Meat Processing Factory_3

But that’s the reality.

Nowadays, the people at the factory are a mixed bag, and most aren’t faring too well. Those that used to come out of the steel mill were all full of vigor, but over the years they have gradually lost their former spirit. Now, their bellies have become more and more robust—without food in their stomachs, can they avoid making a fuss?

Some, who can put aside their pride, ride tricycles in the streets, sell Griddle Cake and tea eggs, or peddle vegetables. Others repair bicycles or motorcycles. At least they can take care of their hunger.

However, there are many more who are unskilled laborers with rough hands and a low level of education. They have skills related to steelmaking but, when it comes to making money for food, they just don’t have a way.

Besides that, the Meat Processing Factory, which had been doing okay a couple of years ago, is no longer on a downward slope but instead is in free fall. It went whoosh—before people could even react, the factory had plummeted from the sky to the ground.

What’s becoming increasingly popular now are the private enterprises—a common situation locally. Old companies with outdated equipment and bloated personnel are less competitive than some of the newer private enterprises that have overtaken them.

No one has a ready solution for the other struggling factories. Take the steel mill, for example. It used to be a major operation with lots of employees and complicated issues, making it almost impossible to find a buyer.

However, for the Meat Processing Factory, there were suggestions about rescuing it, given that it had fared pretty decently in the past couple of years. Could it be saved?

How to rescue it?

If there were a viable plan, it would have surfaced earlier; it wouldn’t have come to this point.

So, someone rather blunt suggested that since the Meat Processing Factory is an old plant and not too big, why not simply package it up for leasing or outright sale? Many enterprises are doing this: They go from being state-owned to private, and suddenly not only do they survive, but they also thrive, right?

As soon as this suggestion was put forth, everyone fell silent.

Why?

There were two reasons; one being that if someone spoke up now and the leaders of the Meat Processing Factory found out they supported selling it, they would offend those leaders. After all, the leaders still held positions of authority, but where would they go if the factory were sold?

This is why everyone thought the person who made the suggestion was a bit naive.

Secondly, everyone knew that there was a cattle farm in the county that playfully started a small beef jerky processing plant. Unexpectedly, their beef jerky became quite popular and is now occasionally advertised on TV and newspapers.

If it were just a small beef jerky plant, that wouldn’t be intimidating. But if behind the small beef jerky plant there stood a gold-digging monster, that merited serious attention.

Given this situation, who would take over the Meat Processing Factory? The small beef jerky plant might be tiny, but with strong financial backing and a model of self-production and sales based at the cattle farm, it contrasts sharply with the Meat Processing Factory, which has to buy cattle and then process and sell the meat. Comparatively, which is stronger and which is weaker in competitiveness is obvious, isn’t it?

In earlier years, the Meat Processing Factory didn’t mainly produce beef jerky. Back then, butchers and restaurants came to the factory to buy beef, and during times of short supply, those buying meat would even need to grease palms to get what they needed. But as time went by and people began to have more money, they started slaughtering cattle on their own. Consequently, the Meat Processing Factory lost its business in supplying fresh meat locally, with most of its clients being from elsewhere.

But over the past two years, even those clients disappeared—the fresh meat business was completely gone. The reason is not hard to guess; the Meat Processing Factory doesn’t have a stable source of supply. Buying cattle from farmers is expensive and offers no guarantee of meat quality. It’s just not possible to adapt to the current economic situation.

Sometimes the workers at the Meat Processing Factory would think about another issue: the factory shouldn’t have collapsed so suddenly, but it was after Yan Fei, a big cattle rancher, emerged in the county that the factory’s situation worsened—and this made sense. Now the cattle prices at Sancha River cattle farm influence the beef market of Sancha River, and when those prices go up, other places can’t be too far behind.

The Meat Processing Factory relies on buying cattle from the market. With cattle prices constantly rising, their days were getting tougher—but for the cattle farm, the price difference was trivial. A fattened cow is easily a hundred or so catties heavier than one that’s not, and now many butchers and restaurants don’t bother with their own slaughtering.

If you asked the leaders of the Meat Processing Factory, they wouldn’t say it’s a matter of the cattle farm in Sancha River Township affecting them. Instead, they’d argue that the reason the factory is in its current state is all thanks to that cattle farm.

The Meat Processing Factory had been able to keep on gasping for breath by producing beef jerky, but then the cattle farm, not content with just raising cattle, started to produce beef jerky too. They poached our technicians, sold their product cheaper than ours, and marketed it as high-end beef in Hong Kong... effectively cutting off the Meat Processing Factory’s last lifeline.

This line of thought... still has some merit.

Tanghe County, as a key breeding area for Wan City yellow cattle, and the Meat Processing Factory being an established brand, means the beef jerky still held some fame. Originally, the factory only operated occasionally, but even so, just this sporadic operation was enough to sustain ’some people.’

Now, Boss Yan had unwittingly become the primary cause of cutting off these people’s ’source of income’ and ’livelihood’—though in reality, these were just the apparent reasons. The state of the factory was well understood by many—they were all pretending to be ignorant, with no one speaking out.

After all is said and done, everyone believes that as long as Boss Yan remains a major player and the Sancha River township cattle farm doesn’t go bankrupt, there’s no hope for the Meat Processing Factory to come back to life or find a buyer, right?

Of course, it’s not that there’s no one suitable for the role. Quiet as it may be, everyone has thought of one person—Boss Yan is the best candidate to take over!

If the Meat Processing Factory were handed to him, he wouldn’t have to bother much. Maybe he’d upgrade some equipment, albeit leaking a bit of money through his fingers, and run a few more ads, and wouldn’t the factory come back to life?

Everyone had come to this realization, but no one brought it up—the meeting couldn’t proceed.

Everyone knew that Secretary Jiao was particularly interested in that enterprise, but as luck would have it, Secretary Jiao was busy and couldn’t attend the meeting. Whether to mention that name or not, many were feeling uncertain!

In the end, the meeting produced an inconclusive conclusion. When Secretary Jiao saw it, he noncommittally nodded his head, pondered for a moment, and then asked Xiao Zhao to give Yan Fei a heads-up and inquire about his thoughts...

This 𝓬ontent is taken from fre𝒆webnove(l).𝐜𝐨𝗺