Topline
Operations at a quartz mine in western North Carolina have been shut down for more than five days after Hurricane Helene dumped 2 feet of rain on the town of Spruce Pine, washing out roads and cutting power to an area with an industry critical to semiconductor manufacturing across the world.
An associate presents micromechanical sensors over a 300-millimeter wafer at Bosch’s semiconductor … [+]
Key Facts
The small town of Spruce Pine—home to fewer than 2,500 residents—is the location of several rare mines that produce ultra-pure quartz for Sibelco North America, the largest employer in Mitchell County, and The Quartz Corp.
Sibelco told The News & Observer this week that operations at its Spruce Pine facility, the largest in the region, have been halted since Sept. 26, when Hurricane Helene first made landfall in Florida, and that the town has been hit with “flooding, power outages, communication disruptions and damage to critical infrastructure.”
The Quartz Corp in a statement on Tuesday said its facilities have also been closed since last Thursday, and that the company has “no visibility on when they will restart” as its teams work with local groups to “try to restore the most basic services and bring further supplies to Spruce Pine.”
Super-pure quartz, mined and produced at few facilities around the world, is used to ensure the purity of molten silicon used as the base for manufacturing semiconductor wafers, as well as for semiconductor crucibles and quartz glass products like windows, rods, and tubes.
It is possible to use less pure quartz to create the same materials, but it’s a slower and more expensive process than using the ultra-high-quality materials that Spruce Pine has “far and away” the most of, economist Ed Conway told NPR.
Roads and rain lines in Mitchell County, North Carolina have been extensively damaged, The News and Observer reported, which stands to further impact the companies’ ability to transport materials even as the mines are able to reopen.
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Crucial Quote
“It is rare, unheard of almost, for a single site to control the global supply of a crucial material,” Conway wrote in his book “Material World.” “Yet if you want to get high-purity quartz—the kind you need to make those crucibles without which you can’t make silicon wafers—it has to come from Spruce Pine.”
Surprising Fact
In 2008, a fire in Spruce Pine forced a local quartz mine to halt production, which “all but shut off the supply of high-purity quartz to the world market, sending shivers through the industry.” That fire impacted only one plant—the Unimin Corporation Quartz/Feldspar Plant, which has since been acquired by Sibelco—and its impacts were still felt industry wide. Today, demand for semiconductors is much higher than what it was in 2008 as they’re used to power newer technologies like artificial intelligence and 5G connectivity.
Key Background
Hurricane Helene made landfall at around 11:10 p.m. EDT on Thursday near the city of Perry in Florida’s Big Bend area. The storm moved through Florida and Georgia before heading north and devastating the areas of eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina. More than 130 people have been confirmed dead in six Southeastern states since the hurricane hit, and as many as 600 people are still missing, according to White House homeland security adviser Liz Sherwood-Randall. More than 1.6 million people were still without power in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia Tuesday morning, according to PowerOutage.US.
What To Watch For
President Joe Biden will fly over the heavily impacted area of Asheville, North Carolina, Wednesday but will not stop for a visit because damage to the city’s roadways have made it impossible for his motorcade to gain access. Only one of the four highways into the city is currently open, “and we can’t shut it down for a motorcade,” Asheville Mayor Esther Manheimer told CNN. Most of Asheville still has no power, water or cell phone service.
Tangent
Emerging medical devices, computers, transportations and other technologies heavily rely on semiconductors, which can both conduct and block electricity, to provide computing power. The world’s reliance on semiconductors is increasingly growing as more devices—from home appliances to vehicles—are being connected to the internet and those items each rely on semiconductors to process and transmit data. The semiconductor industry is expected to see global sales of $588 billion, according to Deloitte, up 13% over 2023.
