The Plan

With Xu Yifan and the others seeing them off, the officials hurriedly left.

Watching the vehicles drive away, Xu Yifan turned to the people beside him.

"Since everyone's here, let's head back and get ready. The department managers will meet in an hour."

"Understood, Factory Director!" everyone replied.

Xu Yifan nodded and headed for his office.

The hour was mainly for him to think about how to put the next steps into action.

Back in his office, Xu Yifan sat down at his desk and opened a notebook. He casually picked up a pen, jotting down important information as he considered the factory's future development.

According to the officials, there shouldn't be any problems with the loan or the land, and both should be finalized in about half a month.

That meant Jiuzhou Automobile Factory should start preparing early. What he'd said at the meeting hadn't been alarmist.

If Jiuzhou Automobile Factory didn't develop quickly, its upcoming competitors might very well devour it without a trace.

If he had a choice, Xu Yifan wouldn't want to take out a loan at all.

The thought always reminded him of a period in his previous life when he had no income and had to borrow money through Huabei.

But cars weren't like other products. Without enough funds, the factory couldn't expand production or develop new products—and would only be eliminated by other automakers...

With a large plot of land, the cost of building new factories would be greatly reduced, and the factory would have enough funds for now to expand its operations.

It was clear that this year would be one of major growth for Jiuzhou Automobile Factory. Whether it could withstand the pressure and even defeat some automakers switching to low-speed electric vehicle production would depend on how well the factory performed this year.

For now, they still needed to wait for word from the officials. From what Chen Qianjun had let slip, a thousand mu was probably possible, and four hundred mu was guaranteed.

But the officials still needed to hold meetings and submit reports before signing an agreement with Jiuzhou Automobile. All of that would take time, and even if they tried to speed things up, it wouldn't happen overnight.

And Jiuzhou Automobile Factory didn't have much time to spare.

So they needed to get some preliminary preparations done.

In the middle of his notebook, Xu Yifan wrote the words "Preparations."

Then, beside them, he wrote "Build New Factories." Following that line of thought, he listed more issues that would need to be handled when building the factories.

The first step in preparing to build two new factories was construction. Even though they hadn't received the land yet, they could still make preparations.

First of all, if they were going to undertake a major construction project, they needed people with expertise in construction.

If they outsourced the entire job to a construction company, there was no telling how long it would take. They might also run into plenty of pitfalls along the way.

So instead, they could establish a construction department within the factory and recruit a team of construction management professionals.

When the major construction work began and they needed laborers, they could hire workers in the city and have the management team supervise them.

That way, they could monitor the construction schedule through the factory's system and finish the work faster.

It would also help them avoid construction-related pitfalls, build the factories at a lower cost, and ensure the quality of both the materials and the work.

The factory buildings could be as simple as possible, as long as they met all the necessary requirements.

This needed to be prepared in advance. He'd have Human Resources Department get ready to recruit people later.

If they waited until construction began to start hiring, the system wouldn't have enough time to assess the candidates' star ratings. It was more efficient to prepare early.

Next came the equipment purchases. The procurement and R&D teams could work together to decide what equipment they needed and what specifications it should meet.

After a few minutes, Xu Yifan had filled a large section of the page beneath "Build New Factories."

His plan seemed sound. The more technical matters could be left to the specialists.

Turning back, he wrote "Funds Allocation" beside "Preparations."

Aside from factory construction, they also needed to plan how to allocate their funds.

The total loan was 200 million yuan, to be disbursed in two installments. The bank would also need to verify Jiuzhou Automobile Factory's operating conditions, funds, and other details.

The finance department would coordinate with the bank. If everything went smoothly, the first 100 million yuan should arrive in about a week.

The second installment would come after Jiuzhou Automobile Factory had built its battery plant and two-wheeled electric vehicle plant and put them into operation. There would probably be a gap of two or three months between the installments.

"I can set the second installment aside for now. I need to think about how to use the first bank loan."

"The 100 million yuan loan, plus the roughly 20 million yuan in working capital Jiuzhou Automobile Factory currently has on its books, gives me around 120 million yuan to work with this month."

Building the two factories was the top priority, especially the battery plant. Now that they had more money, they could build a larger facility and produce more of the new lithium iron phosphate batteries.

The original plan was to spend 15 million yuan on a new lithium iron phosphate battery plant. But now that they had more funds, they could build something bigger and better equipped."

"For the funds, I'll put 50 million yuan into the lithium iron phosphate battery plant."

Of that 50 million yuan, around 45 million would go toward equipment and raw materials—far more than before, which would also let them produce more batteries.

The remaining 5 million yuan would be for the factory building. It didn't need any fancy design; simple and practical would do.

Five million yuan might not seem like much, but at this time, it was still a huge sum.

And they only needed to build simple factory buildings. They wouldn't have to buy land, just bricks, cement, steel bars, and so on, and hire workers. They could get the buildings up quickly.

The financial and real estate sectors were only just taking off, so the costs of materials and labor hadn't yet become as outrageous as they would later.

"Build the factory buildings in stages, too. We need to get at least part of them ready for use as soon as possible.

"Maybe we could buy some of the equipment first and put it inside the existing Jiuzhou factory. We could convert a warehouse into a temporary battery plant and train a group of experienced workers. I'll have to discuss that with the R&D team later."

"The remaining 70 million yuan was originally supposed to cover the two-wheeled electric vehicle factory, which we planned to build for 10 million. Now I'll increase that to 70 million.

"Of course, we won't spend it all at once. We'll build in stages. At first, we might only need around 10 million to build part of the facility and get it up and running as quickly as possible, then gradually ramp up production.

"We don't need anything complicated, just factory buildings. I wonder if we can finish them and start production in about three months. I'll ask the construction specialists and technical engineers later."

"Right, we can also use the profits from Jiuzhou Mini over the next few months to supplement the funds."

As for the final 100 million yuan, once the factories were built, they could use it to develop new technology.

The batteries would give the Jiuzhou Mini an edge in 2009, but that advantage would gradually shrink over time.

Only by continually developing new technologies, and eventually making true new-energy vehicles, could they break through and compete head-on with Joint Venture automakers.

Technology was the most important thing for any company. With 100 million yuan in loan funds, they would have a lot more room to maneuver.

They could spend around 70 million yuan building laboratories. At the time, that should be enough to establish a decent new-energy vehicle R&D lab.

The rest could go toward hiring R&D personnel, improving support services, and providing a more comfortable research environment.

Before the major automakers entered the new-energy vehicle market, they should poach talent early by offering high salaries—ideally bringing in all the big names who would eventually lead the rise of the new-energy vehicle industry!

This was an investment in the future, and the sooner they made it, the better. That way, they wouldn't find themselves waiting around without the necessary technology when they finally needed it.

As for production capacity for Jiuzhou Mini, Xu Yifan would stick to his previous strategy of outsourcing production. He had already picked the targets: the local Huachen Automobile Production Factory, and the Chuanqi Yema Automobile Factory, still known as the Xichuan Automobile Industry Group.

They needed to negotiate the partnerships as early as possible so the automobile factories could make the necessary modifications to their production lines.

As for whether these automakers would agree to cooperate, it shouldn't be a problem. Most domestic car brands weren't selling particularly well, and most production bases weren't running around the clock. As long as they could make money, that was enough.