Industrial planning was not limited to the steel industry. With the arrival of the Second Industrial Revolution, copper found increasingly widespread uses.
In 1870, Austria's copper output reached 580,000 tons, while market demand stood as high as 720,000 tons—a shortfall of one-sixth.
The main reason for this was the arrival of the age of electricity. As the vanguard driving the electrical revolution, Austria's demand for copper naturally grew by the day.
In order to balance supply and demand, the Vienna Government did not hesitate to issue administrative orders requiring state-owned enterprises to increase production. Even so, this imbalance could not be changed overnight.
There was no helping it. A shortage of steel could still be addressed through purchases on the international market, but copper was another matter entirely.
Austria's copper mine output exceeded the combined total of all European nations. Even the United Kingdom produced only a pitiful few tens of thousands of tons of copper in this era.
It was not that everyone did not want to increase production. The problem was that they had no mines at home and had to import raw materials. To raise copper output, they first had to solve the problem of copper ore.
Unfortunately, Europe's reserves of the stuff truly were not high. Otherwise, Chile in the original timeline could not have grown rich by exporting copper ore.
This was deeply discordant for Austria. Domestic reserves were insufficient, while importing copper ore from abroad involved excessive distances. The added transportation costs made corporate profit margins thin.
The Ministry of Industry was preparing to search for copper mines in the African colonies to make up for the shortage of raw materials. They had now found quite a few copper mines, but transportation remained a major problem.
Franz set down the documents, shook his