Herald of Steel

Chapter 328 Sugar Plant

Alexander's sugar plant had not been made yet operational as the beetroots were yet to sprout.

And so today was only Alexander visiting to survey the plant's setup and equipment.

"My lord, it is my honor," A sharp, thin voice greeted Alexander immediately as he made it inside the workshop.

It belonged to a slim, bare-boned man, the drought having eaten away at his health, who wore the best tunic he had and greeted Alexander with a bow.

"Sassim! How are the fields, my man?" Alexander responded to the man with a light smile the peasant who was in charge of the fields of beetroots.

"They are great my lord. The fertilizers that you gave us really had their effect. You will see it once they mature in February. They will be giants!" Sassim let everything off at the first opportunity, the excitement of being able to talk to his lord palpable in his voice.

"Haha, that's great," Alexander patted the man's shoulder as he said that.

And then mysteriously asked, "So, how are the trials going?"

Sassim's eyes too glowed a slight cunning glow as he replied, "Hehe, let me show you my lord, this way."

And then Alexander was led to a small shed whose only equipment was a large empty pot atop a stove and a few linen sieves.

But the group's current interest was not in the bare-boned equipment.

Instead, they focused their attention on the small pouch that Sassim was taking out.

"Here, milord, have a look," The peasant then offered as he undid the knots of the bag, letting Alexander witness the treasures within.

They were sugar crystals, small and granular, having various shades of brown and surprisingly even àwhite!

Alexander had bought quite a lot of beetroots with him from Adhan, and though most of it had been used to plant the crop over the forty hectares area, he still had some leftovers that he had asked Sassim to experiment with.

His goal- to find out what method of sugar extraction produces which kind of sugar grains.

And Sassim was now reporting his findings.

"My lord," He introduced, "The first one is the most basic one. Made from just boiling the beetroot juices and then filtering and cooling them."

The grains of sugar he pointed to were large, crude, and dark brown, inching themselves closer to the color of the wood.

This was the way Alexander first made sugar and as he took a few grains of the stuff, he found its taste familiar, bitter and coarse, and not nice to his refined tongue.

Then, Alexander proceeded to taste the next refinement procedure, the process that helped him kill Diamous and Aristotle, which was adding limestone.

That tasted a bit sweeter but was still a bit salty from the neutralization reaction.

And it was still brown.

Alexander was looking for a bit more refinement and so he moved on.

Next was adding woodchips in addition to limestone.

And produced no change that Alexander could discern.

Then Alexander moved on to the pouch he was most excited about.

The grains inside it were crystal white and sparkling, looking very close to the store-bought sugar he was used to.

"Is this the bone char?" Alexander sounded over the moon as he excitedly felt the beautiful crystals on his fingers, and then placed a bit on the tip of his tongue.

Sweet!

It tasted sweet!

A tasted Alexander seemed to have almost forgotten over the past 10 years.

"Yes, my lord, it is the cow bone char that you instructed us to use," Sassim confirmed, then admiringly added, "I almost could not believe that that brown powder could turn to such pearly white powder. It's amazing!"

And Alexander was inclined to agree with Sassim on this one.

The result of beetroots refined with limestone and then further refined with bone char was indeed amazing.

But how did Alexander know how to use this bone char?

Well, when he was in high school and being taught Napoleon and the battle of Waterloo, his teacher had commented that the dead soldiers of the battle were cremated and their charred bones were used to make sugar, or more particularly it was used to decolorize the sugar and remove the brownness.

Alexander never found out the veracity of that claim in his previous life, but after transmigrating, he felt that there was no harm in trying it out.

Of course, he did not use human bones, but animal ones, mostly bovine.

And the effects were astounding, producing the sugar he was looking for so long!

"Mnnn, this bone char is very really good," Alexander answered the jubilant Sassim with a placid facade, so that the peasant would not know the true value of the technique.

And then quickly moved on to the last test sample, where charcoal was used.

And it too produced a similarly white, crystalline grain, and tasted almost identical.

"Once the beetroots are ready, use charcoal and limestone to refine the juice and make the white powder," Alexander instructed, choosing charcoal over the bone char as it was much more readily available.

And then added, "And I will get you more men to help with the plantation of the beetroots and extraction of the sweet powder from them."

The people did know the name sugar as it was a completely new product and hence just called it sweet juice or sweet powder.

And thus Alexander also addressed it as such.

But Alexander intended to introduce the word sugar by calling it such when exporting it and even naming the shop selling it 'Sugar'.

Speaking of selling, Alexander was sure that he would be able to charge this elusive white powder 1 ropal a gram at the minimum, and possibly much more than that, and people would still come running over, for Alexander knew that the nobles would find sugar addictive.

And this was at a price that was 5% of gold, which went for 20 ropals a gram.

And gold was a non-perishable good.

And it was because of this discovery of white sugar, something Alexander could call white gold that Alexander designated sugar as a Level -5 product.

But Alexander was also sure he would not be able to protect everything regarding it.

First would be because people would be able to just guess what it was made from.

After all, it would be quite hard to hide thousands and thousands of hectares of beetroot farms.

And even if he could somehow do that, it would not be wise to try and monopolize everything.

For the sugar business was too lucrative.

An example would be Alexander's very own production, which was right now quite limited.

But even this mere 40 hectares of beetroots promised astronomical returns.

It was known that the yield of beetroots on good, heavy soil like those around Alexander's estate would get one twenty to twenty-five (20 - 25 tons) tons of the vegetable per hectare.

And Alexander would later find that he was able to turn ten to twelve percent (10% - 12%) of the vegetable in weight into sugar crystals, with the rest of the flesh and fiber later turned into animal feed.

This meant a total promised yield of 80 to 120 tons of sugar, or 80 to 120 million ropals, and possibly even more.

This amount of money was already astronomical and moreover, it could be gotten from a relatively tiny farmland of only 40 hectares, which was being done only as a test project for now.

Now imagine what could be done if it was done commercially.

If it was done not over hectares but over square kilometers, which was a hundred times bigger than hectares.

And it was these kinds of benefits that would remind students of history of the number of wars that Europe had launched in search of sugar, its production, and the procurement of its raw materials.

The European powers had launched countless battles against themselves to obtain fertile lands like those in the Caribbeans to turn into sugar plantations, to acquire slaves to grow, harvest and process these sugarcanes into fine sugar, and to protect the shipping routes of these sugar products.

In fact, the Europeans had such a sweet tooth that there are even records of European lords going to war with their neighbor over not sugar plantations but over a few beehives.

And that was over honey which was just a poor substitute for sugar.

So Alexander knew if he were to too zealously the secrets of sugar, he would have a hard time avoiding war launched against him.

Thus to mitigate, if not prevent such an occurrence, Alexander planned to sell the name of the ingredient and the addition of limestone which would enable them to produce brown sugar, while he would keep the further refinement with the addition of charcoal to himself.

And this would also have another benefit that Alexander foresaw.

And that was that Alexander planned to buy these brown sugars at a discounted rate and transform them into white sugar before reselling them at a premium.

In this way, Alexander would not have to bother with the labor and land-intensive process of actually growing the sugar himself, and could only focus on only refining the product.

In this way he could save himself all the headaches that come with cultivating any crops, such as ensuring proper irrigation, recruiting capable farmers, worrying about the weather like proper rainfall and avoiding droughts, and many more.

With all these considerations made, Alexander asked Sassim to properly look after the fields, and then bid him goodbye, moving on to the last workshop on his list, the rubber shop.