After consolodating and liquidating a ton of old assets - I ended up with some loose change and decided to do some investing.
The end result is that the corp now has 2 more BPO's:
Orca (ME:1, PE:0)
Capital Cargo Bay (ME:50, PE:10)
The Orca is a relatively cheap chip to build (the part requirements are few and low quantities) and sells well in Empire for between 600 - 700m
The Capital Cargo Bay BPO is part way to dealing with the building requirements of the Orca (it's the highest quanity item in the Orca BPO).
Initially we'll need to get some BPC's for the other parts (they tend to sell around 5-8m for a 5 run BPC) but the longer term aim is to have the BPO for all the parts needed.
Over time we'll be able to expand out and build larger ships (freighters, carriers, Capital Industrials, etc).
Beo - does your contacts sell BPC's for the Cap Ship Parts?