It's too bad the factories are stationary on land and not mobile. If factories were built on large boats, maybe old container boats, they could just move closer

It's too bad the factories are stationary on land and not mobile. If factories were built on large boats, maybe old container boats, they could just move closer to the resource. It would still be very expensive to move such a bulk, but the costs would be known and could be evaluated against the other costs and profits involved. To extend the idea, space travel might simplify this - if we build factories on very small asteroids, we could possibly move the whole asteroid across the solar system, to be closer to a resource.