Recipient: Koga Akemi - Osman City, 188-604
Sender: Murasaki Keiretsu – Trinary Star Shipping Division
Subject: Re: Re: Your Business Proposal
Message Begins:
It appears we may have had a slight miscommunication regarding my meaning, Koga-san. My apologies.
To explain; there are typically two types of cargoes that freighters and merchanters transport; the first are consignments like the start-up and bi-monthly supplies you requested that we transport on your behalf. Consignments already belong to another group that is different from the organization owning and controlling the freighters the cargo gets carried on; the freighter and its controlling organization merely moves consignment freight from one location to another for a modest fee.
The second type are speculative cargoes; cargoes bought on spec belong to the crew of the freighter or the organization that owns the freighter. Because the freighter or its parent organization owns the spec cargoes outright -- they don't typically get to charge anyone else for lugging the goods around and they usually have to pay any tariffs or taxes for the goods themselves when they pass through a port -- but the freighter or its parent organization also directly profit when they finally manage to find a buyer for the speculative goods. Depending on the value of the goods and how much higher they can sell them beyond their original acquisition price, speculative cargoes can be considerably more profitable for a freighter than cargo consignments.
What we are proposing is that the freighters making your routine supply runs also bring with them speculative cargoes of materials belonging to Trinary Star Shipping that you can optionally choose to purchase when the ships reach your ports. You won't have to pay the transport fees or tariffs for these goods to reach your stations. Given that TSS's parent organization -- the Murasaki Keiretsu -- also owns a modest-sized mining company and extensive fabrication facilities on White Harbour station, we can acquire most of the raw materials you will need to operate your station and sell them to you beneath their galactic average prices.
Purchasing such materials is more commonly done by unit of mass -- tonnes -- rather than volume.
Cheaper materials like iron, vanadium, chromium and manganese, lithium, beryllium, boron, magnesium, aluminium, scandium, rubidium, strontium, yttrium, caesium, barium and francium will cost about 540 KS per tonne.
Common materials like cobalt, titanium, nickel, copper, zinc, gallium, germanium, arsenic, niobium, molybdenum, tin, lanthanum, hafnium, tantalum, tungsten, lead, cerium, praseodymium, neodymium, samarium, europium, gadolinium, terbium, dysprosium, holmium, erbium, ytterbium, thorium and uranium will cost 72,000 KS per tonne.
Rarer materials such as selenium, palladium, silver, cadmium, indium, antimony, mercury, thallium, thulium, platinum, gold and lutetium are 90,000 KS per tonne.
Very rare materials like ruthenium, rhodium, tellurium, rhenium, osmium, iridium and bismuth are about 1,800,000 KS per tonne.
Other more complex materials like polymers, electronics, mechanical parts or computers will vary widely in price depending on specific production costs.
These listed prices are at about 90% galactic average, but still high enough that we'd be making sufficient profit during each sale. If given sufficient notice we can arrange for specific materials or trade goods to be included amongst the freight brought by the supply ships to your stations. The easiest method would be for you to remotely purchase any of these materials from White Harbor at the listed prices, then have them added to the consignment cargoes that will be sent to your stations bi-monthly.
Signed,
Jōmu Tanaka Aimi
Sales Director, Trinary Star Shipping
Shiroi Minato Station, Anisa System
End Message