Zilch and Mulligan Finances and Investments
New London bureau, CFO Percy Caspian
=====================================================
Greetings, Mr. Somtaaw, and good day to the members of Tipperary Inc.,
we have been monitoring your growing enterprise in Tau23 since our little financial injection. Your base has a slow, but steady influx of Niobium Ore and a similar output and sale of refined Niobium, so that your base nets a profit. I am happy to inform you that your employee Herr Lannik Mueller was therefore able to pay back the complete loan with interest, so that Tipperary is now debt free.
Pleasure doing business with you and have a wonderful day,
Best Regards Percy Caspian
Zilch and Mulligan Finances and Investments
======= "pecunia non olet" =======
CEO: Corduroy D.T. Zilch, Curacao
COO: Erasmus Mulligan, Manhattan; public relations
CFO: Percy Caspian, New London; sales manager
OPENING CHANNEL... USER: Alex Somtaaw Credentials: Dockmaster
It is with great pleasure that i announce that Tipperary is now BACK IN BUSINESS!!!
After being off business due to heath issues, our station hired all workers back with a bonus of 20% payment. You can count on a happy crew and very good deals on our docks! Refer to our Main page for our prices and location!
▒▒▒ INCOMING TRANSMISSION ▒▒▒ >>> SIGNAL LINK ESTABLISHED <<< █▓▒░ Decrypting Message... ░▒▓█
SENDER:ETHAN BLAKE RECIPIENT:ALL PARTIES IN GOOD TERMS WITH THE GUILD ENCRYPTION LEVEL: ████████ (SECURE) MESSAGE STATUS:Live Transmission
█████ CONNECTION STABLE █████
Greetings to all parties that can access this relay. After extensive negotiations, Mr. Somtaaw agreed to retire in one of many paradise planets provided by Spa and Cruise. All funded by the price we agreed to buy Tipperary smelter.
Our goal is to keep the station running same business as before, offering high quality deals and confortable instalations to its crew and clients. We expanding our business a little more, so in future you all can expect even better deals around Taus.
From: Arlo Wren Location: Planet Kyushu, Kyushu System
To: Tipperary Smelter Subject: Introduction
To the Management of Tipperary Smelter,
I am writing to formally introduce myself and our corporation. My name is Arlo Wren of Wren Aerospace Technologies and I believe we can be of use to one another.
One of my pilots spoke with a supply vessel working for your station and informed me that you are in need of some construction materials. To show our good intentions I adjusted a few of our trading routes to assist with your construction efforts.
We have recently deployed a ship yard in orbit of Planet Kyushu and are looking to procure a supplier of niobium, among other goods. I hope you in the future you will be open to trading. I think this relationship could be beneficial to both parties.
We appreciate your initiative in reaching out and for the interest shown in supporting the operations of Tipperary Smelter.
Your gesture in adjusting trade routes to assist with our construction efforts has not gone unnoticed, and we are grateful for the goodwill demonstrated by your corporation. Collaboration with committed partners is always of value to us, especially in this phase of infrastructure expansion.
We acknowledge your recent establishment of a shipyard in orbit of Planet Kyushu and understand the strategic importance of sourcing reliable materials such as niobium. In this regard, your proposal for future trade relations is well received.
Tipperary Smelter is open to exploring mutually beneficial partnerships, and we would welcome the opportunity to evaluate a potential commercial relationship with Wren Aerospace Technologies. Our procurement department will be in touch shortly to further discuss specifications, logistical compatibility, and the scope of materials required on both sides.
We look forward to the possibility of building a productive and long-standing relationship.
Executive Summary - Post-industrial phase at Tipperary Smelter commences; new team saves lives and jobs, offers hope for the future; station name change and IFF change documentation to be submitted to authorities shortly; esoteric library and archive moves from Tau-44 to Tau-23
PRESS RELEASE
New Era at Tipperary Smelter
In response to increasing requests for clarification regarding the future of Tipperary Smelter at Sector E2/3 in Tau-23, we are pleased to issue the following interview transcript:
What has been happening at Tipperary Smelter?
From what I can determine, the base was established under an IMG IFF about a year ago to process scrap into alloy and niobium ore into finished metal. In retrospect, the timing of the enterprise was probably unfavorable as the number of individual miners - both those sympathetic to and those more formally aligned with the IMG - was being dwarfed by the rise of corporate interests in the Tau-23 mining fields. Whereas in previous times the IMG had a type of moral authority based on being the first mover into the system, that's long gone with the various conflicts over the years showing the IMG to be a marginal player with very little ability to influence what happens in Tau-23 and an under-developed political and diplomatic apparatus unable to champion the rights of the independent miners they claim to protect and uphold.
Wait, what?
I suspect the the IMG had very little direct involvement in the creation and operation of Tipperary Smelter, which is a pity as the management could certainly have benefited from their experience and expertise in mining, processing and developing markets for metals. That said, the IMG are quite proactive and I'd imagine that they did what they could behind the scenes to amplify traffic and support the operations of the station. However, it's fair to say that there were not enough independent miners or associated parties to support economic operations at Tipperary Smelter. It's tantamount to negligence that the original business plan included a smelter as how did anyone really think that it would be profitable when the finished alloys only sell for a handful of credits per piece? Is scrap metal even available to be collected in Tau-23? No, not to my knowledge.
Right next door in the neighboring system of Languedoc, the ALG are banging out Basic Alloy at full efficiency and charging only 5 SC per unit. There's never been full efficiency at Tipperary Smelter and it's unknown how many crew members have lost their lives on the station due to mis-management of basic supplies. Rather than establishing formal supply contracts with reputable parties for Water, Oxygen, Food and - ironically - Basic Alloy for repairs, instead the station offered barely at-market prices for these commodities in the hope that somehow passing transports would bring these low value, low profit commodities into the Borderworlds with only Toxic Waste being offered as a return trip commodity.
Difficulties were compounded by the almost unexplainable IMG factional resistance to Freelancers on their rep sheet making it difficult or impossible for these individual operators to land at the base. Freelancers by their very nature are independent, they should be - and actually are - a natural compliment to the IMG, yet the IMG authorities either by default or design list Freelancers as almost hostile on their IFF. Freelancers cannot even land on IMG bases without bribing or tweaking their rep sheet so how did Tipperary Smelter ever hope to be viable as a place for people to live, let alone a place where profit could be generated?
How do you know so much about this?
Well, in truth, I don't. I can only see what I can see from the outside. Maybe the Tipperary owners hoped that naming the station after a forgotten Molly town would bring the erstwhile IMG allies into Tau-23 and they would drop their weapons to take up a life as bulk handlers? Maybe the Mollys thought they could ride shotgun under alternative flags of convenience right past the Bretonians and Gallics who dominate mining and refining in and around Tau-23, who can say? Maybe the owners had Junker bloodlines and thought that they'd rush into Tau-23 and deliver scrap metal for the smelter? Believe me, I've given it a lot of thought and have no idea how they hoped to survive running a smelter in this system.
I oversee a small esoteric library and archive in nearby Tau-44 and the jump hole to Tau-23 exits about 20km from Tipperary Smelter, so we have ships traveling past the station every day and have done so since roughly the beginning of the year. Let me tell you this, hardly a week would go by without crew members on Tipperary dying, the station red-lining due to shortages of basic food, water, oxygen and again ironically, a severe lack of basic alloy which was supposedly being produced by the smelter. These are the normal conditions those people worked under every day. Sometimes weeks would go by with increasing numbers of dead or dying and the management seemed to be unable to appreciate or understand the crew's frequent refusal to work, and more critically, unable to fix any of the issues that gave rise to the deaths in the first place. If this station hadn't been in the Borderworlds but in House space, the lawyers and authorities would have shut this down and jailed the management and owners for negligence and wrongful deaths, at the very least, months ago.
So what's happening now?
From the station record where you are reading this from, you can see above that the original owners of the base sold it to new operators about five or six weeks ago, with the incoming team promising to maintain existing operations and offer "even better deals" whatever that means. In reality nothing changed, the vicious cycle of an inability to secure enough basic food, water and oxygen, exacerbated by a chronic shortage of basic alloy that should have been produced by the smelter led to even more crew deaths with the station red-lining almost every day.
After the base was sold to new owners and the problems continued, I was asked by a number of parties to investigate whether the base would be up for sale again as it was clear that whatever hopes the new team had for the station, it really wasn't happening and we even heard reports of the crew rioting, with more deaths and uneven distributions of food, oxygen and water continuing. Every now and again there was some evidence that the situation might be coming back under control, with a large delivery of one of the commodities, however while the crew gorged themselves on much needed food, they were wracked with thirst and barely able to breath, or able to breath but had no food or water, or had water with no food and barely enough oxygen to live, all the while with the station wasting away around them with the smelter seemingly unable to produce anywhere near the required amount of alloy to keep the station properly maintained, let alone able to sell any alloy or offer any "deals".
To the chagrin of the crew, the new owners recognized the severity of the problems and most of the partners who bought in to share the ownership and operational responsibilities abandoned their investment leaving only one of the new team solely responsible. To his credit, when he had confirmed that the other co-owners had jumped ship, he began serious discussions to sell the base to, I imagined, one of the parties that had expressed an interest and asked me to negotiate on their behalf. Right at the final moment when a number had been agreed, the bidding party pulled out fearing they would be unable to run the station economically. I had two choices, I could either let the negotiation collapse, or I could commit to purchase the station, and as I was the person who had given their word that funding was available, I kept my word with the seller and secured sole ownership of Tipperary Smelter.
What happened then?
The well-being and happiness of the crew was paramount and they'd been through a terrible ordeal, some had managed to survive over a year on the base living with the day-to-day reality of seeing their fellow workers and friends die and then their bodies unceremoniously disposed of through an airlock. Within 24 hours we'd secured the food, oxygen and water supplies, as well as delivering substantial quantities of not only basic alloy, but also hull panels and robotics. We even brought in special deliveries of Luxury Food from Kyushu, and Wine and Cigars from Burgundy to help improve morale.
We have implemented a complete review of all industrial and commercial processes, scheduled to be completed sometime in July 835AS. We're not waiting for the report to be printed, some conclusions are obvious. The smelter has been deactivated and decommissioned, we just have to make the area safe and remove the last of the toxic waste. The Hydroponics Bay was also deconstructed and removed.
What people may not appreciate is that the library and archive in Tau-44 is a completely non-commercial venture. As a privately-owned base (POB) whose sole focus is on providing a venue for scholars, researchers and any interested parties to study and contribute to decoding and translating the esoteric archive, we are not dependent on the vagueries of the commercial marketplace, hoping that passing transports can keep us alive, if they are even able to find the library at the edge of the ice cloud.
Rather, we operate as an informal trade consortium where some researchers in their comings and goings from the library have developed profitable trade routes where upon leaving the base, ship a number of commodities from nearby locations to their intended destinations, and on their return journeys, ship back the essential food, water, oxygen and alloy. Any pricing inconsistencies are leveled out with all parties being treated fairly and equitably, with both the station itself, and those involved in the shipping able to make consistent profits over time. This is one of the advantages of a non-partisan commitment to knowledge, we have researchers arriving from all over Sirius bringing up to date information about supply and demand trends in their home and known systems, so using this knowledge allows us to operate at a far higher level of profitability with minimal counter-party risk.
You haven't mentioned the refinery at Tipperary, what's happening with that?
You're right, and with the refinery I do not want to pre-empt the comprehensive review in progress. From what we can determine, the refinery was predominantly used for the transformation of niobium ore into finished niobium metal, however the technicians advise that the refinery has the capacity to refine up to nine different ores. Therefore, while we won't be running the refinery on a regular or day-to-day basis, having the capability to take advantage of price distortions where lower priced consignments of ore may become available, especially ores where the finished metal is not normally available in the north-eastern Sirius sector, could be attractive. There may be short term specific market opportunities, or it may be that the refinery can produce metals that we would deliver privately as part of normal trade operations.
You raise an important point though and it's one I wanted to address, thank you. When the purchase was completed and access codes transferred on the 23rd April, there were 1200 staff on-board the station. We want to assure everyone that we will not be letting anyone go that wants to stay and we're actively working with the employees to create better opportunities. We need motivated people and some of these people are very motivated having survived a protracted near death experience. With our organisation it is not about 'hours worked', it's about 'where do you want to contribute'. At the Tau-44 facility we had a couple of Renzu Liners for a stratum of people who sought a superior level of accommodation, diplomats, industry leaders, states men and women, even respected academics who would visit the library and archive but prefer a more private and - how shall I say it? - less observable opportunity to study and learn from the archive materials not available elsewhere.
At first the Liners seemed like a ridiculous extravagance, the Reading Room is beautifully appointed and the one in Tau-44 has the most expansive views over the orbiting planets, and I know a number of diplomatic and commercial arrangements have been quietly negotiated there while 'players', let's call them players, liaised with each other while ostensibly discussing the merits of certain esoteric and historical documentation. Those that need to retire to their own floor on liners are generally very appreciative and the library benefits from both small and large donations of materials from old Terra, and we're often gifted whole university collections as, sadly, many factions and indeed some Houses, scale back their educational aims and confine their research to technological or military matters which they conduct in high security, often inaccessible research stations.
It can be a dangerous business, we all remember Ithaca and so when the opportunity to acquire this hardened facility with far better trade and transport accessibility, it was actually a very attractive proposition and I suppose it was only because the Tau-44 facility was going so well that we'd over-looked the necessity of expansion. We upgraded from a Core 1 to Core 2 in Tau-44 but still we were lacking an ability to deeply stock the base with essential commodities and we needed more space for expanded reading rooms and additional temperature sensitive archives where more material could be worked upon. The availability of the Liners masked the core issue that we had outgrown the location and I for one am very happy to have around half of the people on Tipperary revolving through the Liners as they recover from their terrible ordeal and take time to discover what they want to do with their lives and how we can hopefully retain their services. At the moment there's approximately 500 crew and 100 scientists off-base taking a well earned break from station life, and we'll need to make some hard decisions about where we go from here.
What are you referring to specifically?
Well, we 'looked before we leapt', now we need to 'stick the landing'. I don't think we can support two facilities with the current infrastructure and team we have in place. Furthermore, we really don't want to split up the collection, we need the full archive and library accessible in the one place, so whether we made a good decision or not, everything has to transfer over from Tau-44 to Tau-23.
The researchers have been quick to adapt to the new location and there is a custom defensive SRP weapons system on the Tau-23 base which the patrons have nicknamed "the light show" as the Tau-44 base never fired a shot. The streams of laser cannon or whatever type of energetics are being fired have quickly given reassurance to another group of patrons who seemingly heard about our open door policy and democratized access to knowledge, from, of all places, some type of noodle bar called Barrier Ramen in the Coronado asteroid field. Some of those guys have really long attention spans and rarely get up from their study tables for hours. It's quite incredible really, and we are, of course, always gratified to see scholars from Cambridge and other pre-eminent institutions rub shoulders and share their interests with other patrons, whomever they may be. I am especially pleased that the constructive and collaborative culture from Tau-44 has been established quickly in the Tau-23 location.
The decision to sell the Tau-44 base has more or less been taken and it's bittersweet. It will be a shame to leave as it's a great community in that system and I cannot understate how welcome the IMG, the Craytor Republic and the Union Corse have made us feel. Nevertheless, this Tau-23 base acquisition is a step up in visibility for the archive and will hopefully result in more people using the facility, especially when our application for a base name and IFF change is put in to the authorities. The name Tipperary Smelter just has to go. It's synonymous with management neglect, economic failure and the needless loss of human life. There should never have been a smelter in this system in the first place. We can rehabilitate the station and maintain employment for the 1200 crew and scientists, but we need the new name and our customary Freelancers IFF to allow maximum access to the library and archive. The unaligned IFF is very important as we do not want to be implicated in political posturing or subject to the whim or pronouncements of factional leadership, especially in a system like Tau-23 where diplomatic finesse and neutrality can be a positive force for good when surrounded by strong and competing House interests.
Right, so is there anything else that you'd like to say?
It's worth commenting on the negative news media that has tried to inflame tensions in Tau-23 recently. I'm not the first commentator to reject assertions that Houses are at odds with each other to the point where economic interests are being threatened. In my view, there is a very stable situation.
The Gallic IDF base BiaCris has been in system for ages and continues to deliver high quality niobium metal output with open access to encourage and increase sales. The Bretonian firms mostly seem to export ore out of the system and process it within their own refineries. There appears to be some type of IMG/Kusari overlap with the refinery base Riau Star City having restricted docking and perhaps exporting finished niobium metal directly to Kusari, although this could be incorrect as there are layers of secrecy surrounding the operation. Ikarus Station is home to Starlight Research, a Zoners installation who offer technical or exotic products however output currently appears low. Another high quality niobium refining destination is Sanno Mining Facility running under a Freelancers IFF and always stocking sufficient quantities of finished metal which our shippers really appreciate.
Despite the inflammatory language and the occasional system incursion from undesirables from elsewhere, we are very happy to be able to travel freely across the system and share our purchases across all open refinery bases to support as many producers as we can. We are not subject to any IMG market control attempts on ore prices and appreciate clear statements from Bretonian interests supporting the independence and peaceful co-existence of all system residents.
So in short, we're already making the new location work and in an oblique gauge of morale on the station we offered all the crew and scientists the opportunity to choose one of two possible names for a new trade boat to increase operational efficiency. We are pleased to say that "Stendhal's Revenge" won convincingly over "Portnoy's Complaint" so we assume morale is improving.
I'll take your word for it. Anything else?
That's all for now. Interested parties are advised to contact me directly by private communication. Thanks very much for your time and attention, it is very much appreciated.
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