Chapter 87 - 83: Adapting to the Situation (Part 2)
Chapter 87: Chapter 83: Adapting to the Situation (Part 2)
"Huh?" Huang Mao was suddenly at a loss for words.
Another young man in the room, this one with tattooed arms, said with a smile, "Boss, if we can’t do it covertly, we can try probing them out in the open."
"Probe them in the open? Hah... Interesting. Crab, tell me what you’re thinking."
The corners of Xie Xiaowei’s mouth curled up. "Boss, from what I know, Hailufeng Company is a sole proprietorship. All the company’s profits go to one person, its boss, Jiang Miao. Do you think Zhang Xincheng, the guy in charge of managing the eel farm, might be a little unhappy about that?"
Since they were planning to steal secrets, the group had naturally investigated Hailufeng Company’s internal situation.
As for why they hadn’t chosen Rokkaido Eel Company or Brown Company as targets...
The reason was quite simple.
Brown Company’s farm for cultivating eel fry was on a small island. Aside from the local native employees, the management consisted of just a dozen or so white people, making it difficult for any outsiders to get onto the island.
And the Rokkaido Eel Company’s eel fry cultivation farm was also on a closed-off island, making it extremely difficult to covertly get the stolen feed out.
Hailufeng Company’s farm, however, was on the mainland, surrounded by residential areas. That created an opening for them.
The boss, who was puffing away, took a deep drag from his cigarette and asked, "Are you sure you can pull it off?"
"It doesn’t hurt to try. What are they going to do, call the cops on me for something like this?" Xie Xiaowei’s face was full of confidence.
"Then I’ll give you a million..."
"Boss, is that million for me, or for him?" Xie Xiaowei stared at his boss.
The boss wasn’t angered by this. He just laughed heartily and said, "Crab, if you succeed, you’ll get a million just for yourself."
"Then it’s a deal."
"Be careful. If anything goes wrong, I don’t know you," the boss reminded him coldly.
"Don’t worry! I have no desire to do jail time." Xie Xiaowei didn’t seem to mind. He casually grabbed a baseball cap, put it on, and pushed the door open to leave.
...
In the past few days, Jiang Miao had taken some time to create a "brand-new version" of the secret feed formula.
Since someone was still obsessed with Hailufeng Company’s secret feed and its artificial eel breeding technology, he decided to give them a little something in return.
This new version of the secret feed formula could also achieve large-scale artificial breeding of eels. The only difference was that it added a lot more raw materials, replacing some of the cheap ingredients with expensive ones, which increased the cost by a hundredfold.
Jiang Miao estimated that if this formula was used to breed eel fry, the cost per kilogram of glass eels would be around 12,000 yuan.
He had also added some potent ingredients.
These potent, hormone-based ingredients could successfully induce sex change in the eels and allow them to spawn, but the consequences were severe.
One of the most critical side effects was that the resulting eel fry would have a congenital genetic disease, making it difficult for them to survive past four or five months.
Jiang Miao knew very well that after the painful lesson of the West Sea Company, any hatchery making a move in the shadows wouldn’t act immediately. They would experiment in secret first.
But that didn’t matter. Jiang Miao had already anticipated their anticipation.
He had calculated the timeline starting from the moment the other party obtained this "secret feed formula." They would need about three months of experimental cultivation before they could hatch glass eels.
Three months later, he would immediately issue a public announcement stating that in half a year, there would be a major price adjustment for eel fry. At the same time, he would release fake news online, claiming that this was a move to crush any other aquatic hatcheries’ ambitions of cultivating glass eels through a massive price drop.
This way, the group that had just finished their initial verification of the technology would face two choices.
One: give up on producing eel fry.
Two: accelerate production of eel fry.
No matter which they chose, Jiang Miao was guaranteed to win.
If they chose to accelerate production, they wouldn’t have time to raise the experimentally bred glass eels for another four or five months to observe them.
The kind of people who would make this choice were most likely big gamblers. So, in order to turn a profit, they would certainly buy a large batch of mature eels and, at the same time, purchase a large amount of related equipment.
Four or five months later, when the experimental glass eels started dying off one after another, the other party would have already invested a huge sum of money.
Some might think that these glass eels could still be sold to Europe and America, since they don’t need to be raised there and are used directly for cooking.
Unfortunately, Jiang Miao had anticipated this as well.
The glass eels produced with the new formula would have hormone and drug residues in their bodies that would take at least two months to metabolize completely.
And the eel fry consumed in Europe and America are glass eels, not the leptocephali they become after two months of growth.
Even if unscrupulous merchants in Europe and America didn’t mind the hormone and drug residues in these glass eels...
Jiang Miao had another backup plan: launch a price war directly, pushing the price down to the critical line of around 15,000 yuan per kilogram of glass eels.
After all, the cultivation cost for each kilogram of glass eels using the new formula was 12,000 yuan. Add in other miscellaneous costs like equipment depreciation, labor, and utilities, and the total cost per kilogram of glass eels would definitely reach around 15,000 yuan.
If Hailufeng Company dropped the price to 15,000 yuan per kilogram of glass eels, any company using the new formula would be completely unable to make a profit.
At a price of 15,000 yuan per kilogram of glass eels, however, Hailufeng Company would still have a gross profit margin of about 12,000 yuan.
If the other party dared to follow, Jiang Miao would continue to lower the price until they went bankrupt or gave up on the industry.