The British have a long and proud history of manufacturing products for building: cement, bricks, tiles; just thing of Rugby Portland, London Brick and Marley, but equally Blue Circle, Butterley Brick and Redland. We can add Pilkington Float Glass, MK electric plugs and sockets and much more.
These companies worked long and hard to help governments meet their targets for new houses, hospitals, factories, offices and schools.
In the last decades there has been a spate of disposals of building products companies: Redland sold to the French Lafarge and British Gypsum to the French St Gobain; Pilkington bought by Nippon Glass; and RMC sold to the Mexican CEMEX, Blue Circle to the Irish CHR-owned Tarmac and Hanson Cement to the German Heidelberg Group.
This strikes me as a huge mistake not least with the need for housing, new hospitals and the backlog of repairs to public buildings.
British Manufacturing History 