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Yeah, I did it again: I wrote back an answer, and exceeded the limit of the characters in my message. So I'll just write it in an article.

Thanks for the good questions!

Remember, this is an answer to the persons who asked the questions. If you didn't ask the question, don't start complaining that the article gave no good information for you. (You can complain all you want if you asked the question, obviously.) Oh, and don't worry about me writing too much articles, I'll only cover the really good questions... 😉

Starting a raws company
Donating raws/finished goods in a company

Below are my initial thoughts, it's more a working document than a finished article. I might add more clarification later if the ones asking need it, or if there are some good comments by others.

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QUESTION 1

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Dutifully applying eRepublik rules, I will not quote the question. The question was - in short - what needs to be kept in mind when starting a company, in this case focussing on a raws company, that is not producing grain. Indeed, you'll need to travel outside of UNL then...

Starting a company can be quite challenging (fun, but challenging). I think starting a raws company is even a bigger challenge. However, notice that I haven't run a raws company up to now. I will try to answer as good as possible, but I hope some managers of raws companies will comment with additional good tips & tricks. I will not go into detail on how to hire employees, or how important wellness of your employees is, as there can be found enough about that (and you’ll be able to learn that yourself following my last advice 😉 ).

When starting a raws company, you need to keep a few things in min😛

- always try to start a company on an organization. If you start it on your citizen account, you won't be able to work normally anymore (as the game considers your job to be full-time manager). Additional advantage is that you can stay in UNL; only your organization has to move.

- inspired by the one asking the question, who did it already (very good!): start reading articles and the wiki to get a basic understanding. (Commenters: If you have written a good article on starting/running companies, or have read a good article, feel free to shamelessly advertise it in the comments, it can only help.)

- if you start a raws company, be prepared for a huge world-wide competition. Many managers of production companies have their organization travel the world to find the cheapest raws (including me). If one country gets too expensive, I just move my organization to another country. With manufacturing the advantage is that UNL citizens buy on the UNL market, even if it's somewhat more expensive. So instead of competing against the companies in the country, you need to keep an eye on the whole of the world. This could help: http://ereptools.net/market/raw

- I have the feeling that raws companies only become interesting starting from Q2 or Q3. However, Q2 for example would require an additional upgrade which is 20 gold (besides the normal set up costs of 20G!).

- before creating a company, look at if there is a company you can buy (Market > Companies for sale). It can save you some money, which you could surely use at the start. However, make VERY SURE that the company's location is in a high region (for raw companies).

- for the patriots: starting a company in a foreign country cannot really benefit UNL, so you should just look at what's best for yourself. Selling here would require a license (20 G), which is not worth the investment (many companies will buy it in a foreign country anyway). If you start a manufacturing company in UNL, it would contribute to the collected taxes and eUNL's GDP, but it's a tough market here too. However, you are always sure of a market, so it could help to start with "just" a manufacturing company; weapons currently being probably the easiest sector (constant demand, which there isn’t in gifts or moving tickets). Additional remark: thanks to Jofroi's experiences, we can ad😛 "In the opposite of the MT or house market, the raw market is, like the food, a fluent market, which means that you'll never have high stocks (or if you sell to prices far upon the market price maybe...)." Just note, that in contradiction to raws, manufacturing products also sell quite good at Q1 (starting citizens don't have money to buy a higher Q).

- if you don't sell, you don't get income. However, your employees still need salaries and raws. Especially on the start this can be difficult, so make sure you have cash available to cover these expenses for a while! Don’t underestimate this – in my moving ticket company, I currently have a stock of 160 MT’s. Some will probably be sold during the elections, but they have a value of 160 x around 15 NLG x 0.016 gold = 40 gold! The costs in raws and salaries have already been paid, and someone had to pay that 40 gold in advance (and that is you as manager!).

- an obvious advantage of raws companies is that you don't need any raws as input. You would need foreign currency to pay your workers, so if you only have NLG at the moment, take the exchange rates into account.

- there will be instances where you want to communicate with your employees. For example, if somebody is structurally low on wellness, you might want to check if he/she knows about wellness fighting. If you start a company in a foreign country, it might be that not all employees will speak English. Just something to keep in mind…

- the most important tip I can give: before starting, play around with this tool a bit: http://erepublik.ws/companycalc/demo. It's a demo, but it can give you an idea of what to expect, what to take into consideration, and what the impact of certain things will be.

Guess that concludes my initial thoughts; feel free to react on them or ask more detailed information about certain topics. With a company, don't expect to become instantly rich, but do expect a lot of fun.

Good luck!

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QUESTION 2

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A second question is about donating raws to and from companies.

1) Donating from an org. to a manufacturing/construction company:
Donating raws to your company can be done by logging in to the account where you have bought the raws with, selecting the company (search for you organization and select the company, or select it in my places if the company is on the same account). Right of the stock of raws you have, there will be a button with &quot😉onate materials". From there, it's quite obvious.

2) Donating raws* from a company to another company/org. (*same works for end products like food). Now, I obviously trust that you won’t use this information to evade the 1% VAT in UNL. The taxes are really low, and you’ll help your country. The information below can be useful to be able to cheaply donate the raws you produce in another country to your UNL company.
You cannot donate produced raws directly from the company's stock to something else. You really need to sell it on the market. Now, one way of making it sort of possible, is to buy it yourself.

You can put up raws on the marketplace at any price you want (not too low, obviously): as there is no VAT on it, you won't lose any money by buying it yourself. (Thanks, Jofroi!) Buy it with your organization (citizens can't buy raws), and donate as raw to any company (see above) or organization (as normal item).

For products like food, weapons, etc. put an offer of maximum 20 products (you can only buy 20 as more don't fit in your inventory) on the market where you price your finished products at 0.01, quickly go to the marketplace and buy them. It might help to open two tabs: one where you make the cheap offer, and one with the marketplace (with the country & product already selected so you can quickly refresh). You can then donate them to the citizen or organization you want. Advantage is that you don't pay taxes (you get the products at a very low price, so the ..% VAT of 0.01 is almost nothing), disadvantage is that if you're not fast enough somebody else will have your products for 0.01. However, this shouldn't happen (as you know exactly when you press the button, the timeslot is very small). To start with: Try it with just 1 product instead of 20 first to be sure it works.

Thanks again for your good questions, and keep sending them in!