Overseas expansion
Blue Circle's overseas activities began in 1912. The Tolteca plant near Mexico City had been established by the American Louisville Cement Company. The Americans, rattled by Mexican political instability in 1912, wanted to sell out. A Blue Circle director travelling in Mexico wrote them a cheque, and on returning to London, announced to the Board that they were now operating in Mexico. Similar deals were made for plants in Vancouver Island, Canada and the Orange Free State, South Africa in the same year. In later years, this wide geographical spread became a notable advantage for the company. The cement industry, although extremely capital-intensive, is subject to exaggerated economic cycles. Geographical spread allowed financing of investment in areas experiencing down-turns using revenue from more buoyant areas. At various times, the company owned or part-owned manufacturing capacity in Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, India, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Tanzania, Egypt, Ireland, Spain, Denmark, Greece, United States, Chile and Brazil. During the 1970s Blue Circle became, briefly, the largest cement manufacturer in the world.[4]
In the 1920s the company's main brand name – Blue Circle – began to be used informally for the company itself. But it was not until 1978 that the UK company name was officially changed from APCM Ltd to Blue Circle Industries plc.
The company gradually built up a competence in the technical aspects of low-cost cement manufacture, and installed many new plants during the period 1950–1970, to its own specifications. It also sold manufacturing and plant-installation turnkey consultancy.
The company faltered following the 1970s energy crisis. The company's UK capacity reached its peak of 13 million tonnes per annum in 1973, and ultimately fell to half that level. Simultaneous worldwide contraction of markets led to severe retrenchment. In the 1980s, major overseas investments were sold, notably the by-then very large Mexican operation. The Mexican plants became incorporated into the Cemex group, which by 2006 became the world's third largest cement manufacturer. This was followed by several failed attempts at diversification, which also failed to enhance investor confidence. In the late 1990s, the company again attempted to expand its cement operations geographically, this time facing intense competition from other large companies.
Fate
In 2001, the company, now shrunk to sixth largest worldwide, was bought by the French company Lafarge.[5] Lafarge thus became the world's largest cement manufacturer. Lafarge continued to use "Blue Circle" as its cement brand name in the UK.
An agreement in 2012 between Lafarge and Anglo American proposed the creation of a joint venture to be known as Lafarge Tarmac. The Office of Fair Trading referred the deal to the Competition Commission, which instructed the two companies to sell off the Hope works in Derbyshire along with over half of their proposed joint UK ready-mix concrete capacity, together with sundry other facilities including asphalt plants, as a condition of approval for the joint venture. This led to the creation of Hope Construction Materials, which commenced operations in 2013 as Britain's leading independent producer of cement, ready-mix and aggregates, following acquisition of over 170 operational sites, including the former Blue Circle Hope cement works. In 2016, The Breedon Group purchased Hope Construction Materials for £336 million.
In 2015, following the merger of Lafarge and Holcim, as part of another complex deal to appease European competition regulators, the Irish building materials company CRH plc
