Compared with the artificial synthesis of Quinine, artificial dyes had far brighter prospects.
At this time, Austria alone imported dyes worth tens of millions of Florins each year. Not to mention that as the economy developed and living standards rose, demand for dyes would inevitably increase further.
However, the road to monetizing synthetic dyes was not smooth. As the imperial family's special adviser, John Sina had always been responsible for this work. He had never doubted Franz's judgment, but this time, he found himself at a loss.
"Your Majesty, with our current technology, aside from several special dyes, the unit production costs of aniline blue and fuchsin still cannot match those of natural dyes."
Franz nodded. Purple was considered a scarce dye at this time, so selling it at a high price was naturally no problem. Yet scarce dyes were scarce precisely because there was so little of them, and even if prices fell, the customer base would only expand to a limited extent, not infinitely.
Therefore, production and prices had to be kept under control. Otherwise, once prices came crashing down like a landslide, it would be difficult to pull them back up again.
As for dye costs, they would fall rapidly with scale and technological progress. Otherwise, chemical dyes would not have won such a thorough victory in history.
Yet Franz remembered that chemical dyes seemed to have been able to suppress natural dyes in competition from the very beginning.
Moreover, the Austrian Empire's synthetic technology had been improved, producing far higher yields than the original methods. There was no reason for it to be worse than history.
Could it be that Franz had changed history, causing dye prices in the Austrian Empire to be too low now?
He shook his head. Dye prices in the Austrian Empire