Removing Duplicate References

Hi all. Run into a slight technical hitch with Blender, exporting to UE4.

The problem I have is that not all the pieces are joined when in UE4. What I mean is, pieces that use the same texture aren’t one object.

I’m not 100% clued up on how references are handled in Blender yet.

I have applied the material in Blender by choosing existing ones, so im not using the same material with a (##) on the end.
But… the texture references do. And I’m not sure how to go about removing them.

I hope my description makes sense to someone. I have searched around for an answer, but to no avail.

Any ideas what I’m talking about?

Thanks in advance everyone!