^ it does if there is now more reasons to siege POBs.
It also makes for "prime" targets / pirating routes. If you know somebody has a POB that produces expensive commodities you are more interested to target it as a pirate.
Multiple factions might have the same idea of pirating the rich POB trader and thus you get inter-faction conflict.
Unlawful activity brings lawful activity.
And then you get gameplay.
Better than the current one of traders flying around aimlessly and pirates being almost non-existent (or just pirating miners in the same mining spots again and again).
EDIT:
I realize making the POB factory just turn one type of commodity into another might not be very balanced. It could be made harder to exploit by requiring other commonly produced commodities (fuel, polymers, neon, whatever) for the recipes.The end result would be more diversified hauling instead of everyone just trading ores or smuggling Cardamine and Artifacts. I think people would actually fight for prime locations for their POBs much more than they do now (because now it doesn't matter much, the only way to earn credits through POB manufacturing is making expensive equipment, and there's not that big of a market for that, seeing as it's often recycled by people).
