New Industry Takes Off

In the blink of an eye, November 15th arrived.

Jiang Miao came to the cannery for inspection.

"Boss, this is our newly purchased soft pack canned food production line..." Li Xinhua, dressed in protective clothing and a breathing hood, introduced him to the production line.

This production line didn't have many automated pieces of equipment. The core was the sterilization equipment and packaging equipment. The other parts were operated manually.

It wasn't that Hai Lu Feng Company couldn't afford automated equipment, but rather that automated equipment wasn't cost-effective. Moreover, sometimes, the scale of employees was also an advantage.

Jiang Miao, also wearing protective clothing and a breathing helmet, picked up a bag of Unagi Kabayaki. This was a whole eel, mainly supplied to sushi restaurants and Japanese restaurants.

"Is this the first batch of products from formal production?"

"Yes, for the first batch, I arranged 2000 portions to test the market reaction."

Jiang Miao nodded: "Okay, you can coordinate with the Online Store Department! By the way, how is the eel inventory?"

Li Xinhua immediately explained: "Currently, the farm eliminates 5000 White Eels every half month. The Tinplate Canned Food production line can consume 1000 eels per day; coupled with the Soft Pack Canned Food production line which can also consume 1000 eels per day, the inventory can only last for about two to three days. To save costs, I first arrange the production of Tinplate Canned Food, then stop production and arrange the employees on the Soft Pack Canned Food side. This ensures 10 days of production time each month."

Jiang Miao actually knew about this point.

And Li Xinhua's strategy was also fine. Anyway, some of the production line employees at the cannery were paid for two weeks. When the production line worked for a full month, they would be paid for a month.

Currently, the employees on the canning production line are basically D1 level, with a monthly salary of 3500 yuan, including food but not accommodation.

Working for two weeks is calculated as half a month, with a net payment of 1750 yuan. The five insurances are paid by the company on their behalf and do not need to be deducted from the employee's basic salary.

It doesn't seem high, but many local people are still flocking to it.

The main reason is the inclusion of food, plus the company covering the five insurances. If they can work for a full month, many production line employees are actually willing, but the farm doesn't have that many culled eels, so they can only produce for one week and rest for one week.

After inspecting the cannery, Jiang Miao took a car directly to the farm.

The new farming base was still under construction with overtime.

And the open-air fish ponds that were taken over have also been put into use one after another. Mature eels purchased from various places were reintroduced into the open-air fish ponds for customized feeding.

These matters have always been managed by his brother-in-law and father. He went directly to his seed laboratory.

Currently, the first batch of transplanted strawberries has begun to flower one after another, and some early-maturing types have already started to bear strawberries.

A middle-aged employee responsible for the daily work in the greenhouse saw him coming and quickly put down the watering can.

"Boss."

"Lao Lin, how are the strawberries today?"

Lao Lin quickly said: "Boss, some strawberries should be ripe today."

Jiang Miao went to the container house to get a refractometer and a notebook.

Li Wenna also helped carry a portable plastic box, which contained small boxes, labels, scissors, and tissues.

Walking into the greenhouse, the 35 varieties of strawberry seedlings had been separated, with plastic film as partitions dividing them into small areas to avoid cross-pollination and affect the genetic purity of their varieties.

Currently, through continuous runner propagation, seven or eight plants have been cultivated for each variety.

The ones that have ripened this time are all the original old plants. The newly cultivated divisions will not flower and bear fruit for at least another month.

"Boss, this is the variety."

Jiang Miao glanced at the tag on the planting bag: C12

There were 6 strawberries hanging from the roots of the strawberry stolon: 3 red and 3 green.

One of the red strawberries was indeed ripe, as he saw the data on the appraisal panel.

He picked it with scissors, washed it slightly, then cut the strawberry into five pieces. He kept one piece as a seed, and took another piece to squeeze out the juice, dripping it onto a sweetness meter.

The sweetness was 14.8. This sweetness was acceptable. Although it couldn't compare to top-grade Dandong Strawberries, Jiang Miao valued its fruit shape more, as the specialty of this variety was large fruit and good storage life.

"You guys try it."

The three of them tasted it carefully.

"It's very sweet, but with a little acidity, and the flesh is quite firm," Li Wenna said, expressing her feelings.

"Hmm, it's really sweet." Lao Lin was like Zhu Bajie eating a ginseng fruit, mainly just gulping it down.

Jiang Miao carefully held the flesh on his tongue, savoring the various flavors within.

First was sweetness, then a slight sourness, followed by the unique aroma of strawberries. This aroma leaned towards a combination of cantaloupe and jasmine, but the aroma was relatively faint and required careful tasting to perceive.

He filled in these flavor evaluation results one by one in the record book.

Immediately after, he found 11 more varieties with ripe fruit, and similarly, he kept samples, measured sweetness, tasted, and recorded.

Through this real evaluation, he directly eliminated 3 varieties because their flavors were very strange. One had a slight muddy taste, one had a distinct bitter taste, and one was as tasteless as water.

The more valuable ones were the C22 and C26 varieties.

The flavor of C22 was highly similar to Zhang Ji Strawberries, but the creamy flavor was more prominent, and it was heat-resistant, able to withstand the high temperatures of 35 degrees Celsius in Lingnan during summer, thus ensuring sweetness, disease resistance, flavor, and yield.

The flavor of C26 was different from previous strawberries. This variety had a unique vanilla flavor, and also a complex flavor similar to passion fruit. The only weakness was that it could not tolerate high temperatures of 30 degrees Celsius, so it could only be planted in Lingnan during winter.

Of course, the other 7 remaining varieties also had their advantages.

For example, the C12 that was tried at the beginning. This variety had relatively large fruits, which could reach the size of a duck egg, and the yield was also very high. It was estimated that the greenhouse yield per mu could reach about 4.5 to 5 tons.

Coupled with the good flavor and sweetness of C12, as well as its tolerance to high temperatures in Lingnan during summer and its good storage characteristics, this variety also had commercial value.

After Jiang Miao tasted the first batch of fruiting varieties and recorded the relevant evaluation data, he had already planned out a strategy in his mind.

First of all, the greenhouses at the farm were definitely not enough.

After all, a single ripe strawberry contains 150-200 seeds, plus propagation by stolons, a large number of strawberry seedlings can be cultivated quickly.

Based on an average of 5000-6000 strawberry seedlings per mu.

Currently, there are at least five or six varieties in the greenhouse that need to be initially expanded in planting scale, and each variety requires at least 5 mu of land.

In other words, at least 30 mu of land is needed.

Fortunately, there is a lot of abandoned farmland in Yan Cun Village. He plans to rent 100 mu of vegetable land nearby to build a strawberry greenhouse base.

With a planting base, whether selling strawberries directly or exporting strawberry seedlings in the future, it would also be a good business.

However, Jiang Miao did not plan to hand this matter over to his brother-in-law and father. After all, an eel farm was busy enough, and adding a strawberry base would easily lead to a situation where they couldn't manage everything.

Therefore, he planned to find another manager specifically for the strawberry base.

Fortunately, the company was gradually maturing. Jiang Miao directly instructed Li Wenna to inform Jiang Haibo in the Human Resources Department to recruit an outsider with farm management experience.

At the same time, he also asked Li Wenna to inform Wang Feng in the Procurement Department to rent a piece of vegetable land of about 100 mu in Yan Cun Village or nearby villages in Ma Gong Town to serve as a strawberry planting base.