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Balmer Lawrie

Market leader in Steel Barrels, Industrial Greases & Specialty Lubricants, Corporate Travel and Logistics Services

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJun 15, 2026
Entity authorityQ4852358
Source-derived summary

Balmer Lawrie & Co. Ltd. (BL) is an Indian central public sector undertaking and a conglomerate under the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, Government of India. It is classified as a category-I Miniratna company. Originally founded in 1867 by George Stephen Balmer and Alexander Lawrie in Calcutta, British India, the conglomerate has eight strategic business units, four joint ventures in India and abroad, and a subsidiary in India.

History

Balmer Lawrie was founded as a partnership firm on 1 February 1867 in Calcutta, British India, by two Scotsmen: George Stephen Balmer and Alexander Lawrie. It became a private limited company in 1924 with a paid-up share capital of ₹40 lakhs, a public limited company in 1936 and then a Government of India Enterprise in 1972. BL is classified as a category-I Miniratna company.

Joint ventures and subsidiary

Balmer Lawrie has joint ventures in both India and abroad and a subsidiary in India.

Joint Ventures in India

Balmer Lawrie - Van Leer Ltd.

Editorial summary

“Balmer Lawrie” enters the record as market leader in Steel Barrels, Industrial Greases & Specialty Lubricants, Corporate Travel and Logistics Services. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Balmer, Lawrie and Market can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1867, 1924, 1936, 1972—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1867-02-01. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Balmer, Lawrie and Market.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Balmer Lawrie” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Balmer, Lawrie and Market provides the most credible route into that argument.

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 Jun 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4852358. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1867, 1924, 1936 and 1972.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. 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 “Balmer Lawrie”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Balmer Lawrie primary sources, Balmer Lawrie archive and Balmer 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 “Balmer Lawrie”?
  2. What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
  3. Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Balmer Lawrie” 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.