Heidelberg Materials UK
subsidiary in the UK
Heidelberg Materials UK is a British-based building materials company, headquartered in Maidenhead. Previously known as Hanson UK, the company has been a subsidiary of the German company HeidelbergCement since August 2007, and was formerly listed on the London Stock Exchange and a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index.
Originally trading as Wiles Group; the company was transformed into Hanson Trust Ltd by James Hanson and Gordon White in 1964. Over a thirty year period, Hanson pursued a principal strategy of raising shareholder value through a series of acquisitions. Several large businesses were purchased throughout the 1980s, such as the United Drapery Stores in 1983, Imperial Tobacco in 1986 and Kidde in 1987. Some of these acquisitions drew criticism and opposition. During 1991, Hanson Plc attempted its largest-yet acquisition of Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI), but this was hotly contested and ultimately unsuccessful.
By the start of the 1990s, Hanson Plc had become a sizable conglomerate and one of the largest firms based in Britain. However, amid negative perceptions of the conglomerate model, the company was reorganised into four separate listed firms during the mid 1990s, these being: Hanson plc, Imperial Tobacco, The Energy Group and Millennium Chemicals. In 2007, HeidelbergCement purchased Hanson Plc in exchange for £8 billion to create the second largest cement and building materials company in the world.
The public source identifies “Heidelberg Materials UK” as subsidiary in the UK. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Heidelberg, Materials and subsidiary.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q505012. VIAF identifies the subject as 122456022. The Library of Congress control number is nr2003032756. 2 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2007, 1964, 1983 and 1986.
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This entry incorporates text from “Heidelberg Materials UK” 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.