Chapter 246 Soap Making (Part-2)

Haquim had a huge imposing stature, being a tall black man and chiseled to the point he looked like a statue carved from granite.

His upper body was bare, and glistening with sweat as all the toned muscles worked the pot.

Just by looking at his body, it would seem to be a waste to put him anywhere else but the military.

But the man was a born pacifist and because he refused to enlist in the army under Amenheraft's levies, he was sold to slavery.

"Haquim, get here, the lord is here to meet you," Takfiz fiercely ordered and soon the half-bare man stood in front of Alexander.

"My lord, I was just showing the men how to stir the pot, hehe" He reasoned for his tardiness with a foolish smile showing all his pearly whites.

"Haha, it's great to see such an eager worker, good, good," Alexander did not hold anything against the honest man.

And then asked, "So, how is everything doing?"

"Fine, fine. We have just started the heating yesterday, and like master said it will take another day of cooking." Haquim enthusiastically replied.

"Are the pots kept heated and stirred?" Alexander inquired next.

"Oh, yes, we are working in shifts to always keep the pot always stirring. We change men every hour so they don't get tired." The muscular men grinned the reply.

"And firewood is always kept nearby so the heat does not die," He added.

"Umm, good, so which pots have which alkali?" Alexander asked and was shown ten large pots, the same kind of pots Alexander used to make food for hundred people, two of each containing the same alkali.

"Mmmm, when done remember to spread each of the solutions separately over a clean floor about an inch thick. It will take a day to cool and then you cut it into two inches by one inches rectangles." Alexander gave the soap dimensions.

"Yes, master," The man nodded.

"Mmm, and remember to use a scale when you cut the soaps, we want all of them to be identical in size," Alexander further told the nodding man.

And with this, after a bit of talk about the operations and inquiring about his demand for men and materials, Alexander let the man get back to work.

Soap making was a very time-consuming process and Alexander knew it would take around two months to get the soap to the market.

This was because, after cutting the soap, workers would have to hammer in Alexander's shop logo using a special mallet with the logo on its head and then stack up these soap bricks into giant pyramids for four to six weeks to dry and cure.

Then they could be wrapped in paper or just sold over-the-counter bare.

During the inspection of the soaps made using different alkali, Alexander would find the lye(NaOH) soap to be the most solid soap.

Very hard and strong, with a unique smell. he would in later batches add dried and crushed additives like rosemary, lavender, and thyme to the soap to give it a flowery, sweet lingering smell.

The next hard soap would be the soda ash (Na2CO3) soap, being a bit less hard.

The caustic potash (KOH) soap would be relatively soft, one would be able to make a thumbprint on the soap just by pressing on it a bit hard.

The potash soap would come as almost as a liquid.

And at last, the quick lime (CaO) soap would be a fully liquid soap, like a shampoo.

Alexander planned to sell these soaps exclusively to the nobles and the well-to-do people.

Because by his calculations it would be too darn expensive for ordinary people to afford.

And he did some simple math to figure this out.

The cost of one liter which was about one kilogram of olive oil was fifty (50) ropals.

And in a large, about two-hundred gram(200g) bar of soap, it would make up half, or one hundred (100g) of the weight, which came to five (5) ropals.

Then came the cost of the alkali.

The cheapest one was soda ash, taken directly from the edge of rivers and streams.

While this might seem free, one had to remember that to get the mineral the water was dissolved in had to be boiled out.

And on average one hundred kilograms of water, after removing all the other impurities and miscellaneous minerals got him just ten kilogram of soda ash.

And with ten kilograms of firewood costing one ropal, this boiling process was not cheap.

Alexander thus put the cost of one kilogram of soda ash at one ropal and even that was on the low side.

While the most expensive ones like lye and caustic potash, due to the much more complexity involved, was put at four ropals a kilogram.

And then there was all the labor cost, the biggest being the slaves, who did ninety-nine percent of the work, with the other one percent were the shopkeepers who sold the thing, the clerks who kept the record, and other people who did the odd jobs like guarding the door and keeping the shops clean.

It would be very wrong to argue that slaves were free labor, as it had to be remembered that Alexander paid four thousand ropals on average for them and their three meals a day cost him two ropals, which had to be included in the cost.

There was also the cost of heating, clothing, and housing them.

Then came the setup cost, the various pot, and stirrers, the soap-cutting tools, the hammers used to brand the logo, the wrapping paper, etc, the list could go on.

The transportation cost was next, which had the cost of the purchasing the wagon, the salary of the man driving it, and the feeding and maintenance of the horse pulling the cart.

And at last, there was the land cost, as the land they were using to make soap could have been used to make something else,

Alexander estimated that even the cheapest plant soap, one made from soda ash would cost him close to ten ropal per bar of soap.

While the more expensive lye soap could be close to double.

And thus he found that this cost, even the cheapest soap would be an astronomically luxurious item for a hard-working peasant.

Because at the end of a month, after paying all their expenses, peasants are usually able to only save up to ten to fifteen ropals a month, in case they need it for any emergencies.

And none of them would be foolish enough to use their entire month's savings on a bar of soap, which, even if the family used them to wash their hands two times a day at meal times, without using them for bathing or cleaning, would last them may be a fortnight.

If they had such ability to splurge on luxuries, they would rather spend the money on meat and fish, which was eight ropals a kilogram.

And the peasants only ate such delicacies during special occasions, like the new year of religious festivals or during butchering seasons when the prices of meat would fall.

Even the cheaper soap, one made from animal fat, was not still affordable to them.

Because to get the fat, a whole animal had to be killed.

Granted its other bits could also be sold, but even after all that, even when using the fattiest animal known to mankind- the pig, per kilogram of fat came to five ropals.

This came to four ropals for a bar of soap which was the price of two kilograms of wheat.

Thus, due to the inherent expensive nature of the ingredients used to make soap. instead of a 'for the common masses' product. Alexander decided that his target demographic would be the nobles and well-to-do merchants.

It would a luxury product with a profit margin of at least ten times instead of an everyday commodity.

And this was the case even in Alexander's previous world.

Soap belonged almost exclusively under the use of nobles and only became available to the regular public after industrialization,

And some cultures like the roman did not use soap, but rubbed their body with olive oil, used sand as an abrasive medium to rub the dirt out, and then used a special tool to scrap off the oil.

And in Adhania, because of the prohibitive cost of soap, the public did not use it.

If one came from the fields after working the whole day and wanted to clean his greasy hands, he would just take a pinch of ash, rub it on his hand and clean the hands using water.

And because of this, as ash was very caustic, many farmers would have burnt like hands or even die from various skin-related diseases.

The only place where soap was used outside of nobility was by tanners to clean hide, especially wool.

And as such, Alexander would sell his animal fat-based soap exclusively to them, as that soap would have a slightly, stinky, fatty smell to them that the nobles loathed.

And with these thoughts embedded in him, Alexander moved to his last shop.