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Blue Circle Industries

UK business

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 7, 2026
Entity authorityQ4928972
Source-derived summary

Blue Circle Industries was a British public company manufacturing cement. It was listed on the London Stock Exchange, and a long time constituent of the FTSE 100 Index.

Blue Circle Industries was founded in 1900 as the Associated Portland Cement Manufacturers Ltd. through the amalgamation of 24 cement works, located mostly around on the Thames and Medway estuaries, together having around a 70 percent market share of the British cement market. In 1911, the British Portland Cement Manufacturers Ltd. was formed by the addition of a further 35 companies, creating a company with an initial 80 percent of the British cement market. Subsequently, the company expanded overseas, predominantly into Commonwealth countries and South and Central America. During 1953, the company was floated on the London Stock Exchange.

During the 1970s, Blue Circle was briefly the largest cement manufacturer in the world. However, the energy crisis of the 1970s compelled the company to contract, largely via the sale of several overseas plants.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Blue Circle Industries” as uK business. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Blue, Circle and Industries.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1900, 1911, 1953—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1900. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Blue, Circle and Industries providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Blue Circle Industries”, the useful work is to connect “uK business” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4928972. VIAF identifies the subject as 123779210. None of the 2 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1900, 1911 and 1953.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Blue Circle Industries”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Blue Circle Industries primary sources, Blue Circle Industries archive and Blue research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Blue Circle Industries”?
  2. Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
  3. What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Blue Circle Industries” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.