Ooh yeah okay that makes sense. I didn't realise that saving intermediates would allow you to cheese like that. Yea it was mostly that at the start I had trouble setting up a factory for factories as it required 3 factories (iron, computer chips and one to make the factories) but you only start with 2 factories.
Note: While typing this I opened the game back up and saw that you start with 4 factories. I have no idea how I ended up in a situation where I only had 2 but I guess starting with 4 makes my complaint irrelevant haha.