“Far more than that, your Highness!” Barov said excitedly, “Perfume is King’s City Alchemist Workshop’s top-secret product, every year there are approximately one thousand bottles, only a small part of it is sold in King’s City. The rest is sold to the others cities in Graycastle, there they can raise the price by twenty to thirty percent, but in case they sell it to the Fjords or other Kingdoms, the price would almost be doubled. To prevent the merchants from making a profit out of the difference in prices, the association not only firmly controls the perfume prices in other places; they even assign all the merchants by themselves. So in case you can could produce perfume, even if you only sold it to Redwater City or Fallen Dragon Ridge, you would definitely obtain a generous payback.”
“So, that’s how it was.”
There were many ways to make perfume, the simplest method was to mash the petals or herbs with unique flavors and let them soak inside alcohol, letting the alcohol dissolve the plants, and leaving an aromatic oil remaining. Lastly, the remaining remnants will be filtered out and diluted with water.
The alcohol came from the juice of the sugar cane; while for the aromatic oil they could use roses, or the more commonly rosemary and vanilla. However, since it was necessary to achieve mass production, the best choice would be to let Leaves use her magic to transform a plant to directly secreting this fragrant oil.
In addition to perfume, the industry could also produce white sugar and liquor. Also, a lot of consumables would be needed, and their profit would be less than what was gained from the perfume, but if sold to the town’s people at a low price, it would enrich their diet, which could be regarded as a significant step forward for the people’s welfare.
Roland’s main reason for the slow development of the light industry was due to the shortage of a workforce, and the difficult to earn high profits with a small-scale production of daily necessities. Because of this, a limited population investing into heavy industry production, would be the most cost-effective approach.
Since the manufacture of perfume was incredibly profitable, maybe he could take advantage of this opportunity to make up for the shortcoming in environment.
It was already the second month of summer, and as scheduled, Margaret arrived on the day of midsummer.
This time, the amount of ships brought by the business group was far more than the pier could accommodate, so many boats now had to dock by the river and wait for the other ships that were in front of them to finish unloading, and allow them to access the pier for themselves.
This caused Roland to realize that the town’s pier would have to be expanded.
This month, Graycastle Industrial Company has finally completed their task, by reducing the scrapping rate to forty percent, they had successfully produced three steam engines for the day of delivery. Although compared to the current third generation used in Border town, the ones the factory produced for foreign trade were lacking in power, leaked air, were noisy, rattled and had other aspects that made them of a much lower quality. But compared to the former number of produced machines, it was still a great deal of progress.
The Crescent Moon Bay Caravan brought an artisan team of three hundred as had been arranged. Roland placed all of them in the industrial park at the southern side of the Redwater River. In addition to building a new wooden factory besides the original plant, he also ordered Karl to build an employee dormitory near the river. So that they could finish these facilities within a month, all the the huge logs needed were transported to the scene and then cut by Anna along with Karl’s technical guidance. Like this, the originally most time consuming task of processing the wood was completed in just two days.
When Teacher Karl saw Anna’s new ability he was stunned, in just six months, this weak and quiet girl had become so self-confident and seemed to always be in high spirits.
At the castle, Roland held a sumptuous dinner, welcoming the arrival of the business group.
At the same time, it was also the first time that White Liquor appeared in their line of sight.
“Every time we come here you will have developed new stuff, Margaret really did not lie to me,” Hogg yelled, “even the wine is so out of the ordinary…this…“
“White Liquor,” Margaret reminded.
