Updated with additional comments from officials
Hurricane Helene ravaged a small town in North Carolina where high-purity quartz is mined and processed that is vital for the manufacture of silicon for integrated circuits.
The hurricane killed as many as 152 people in areas from Florida to North Carolina and devastated the town of Spruce Pine, North Carolina, where quartz mining and production occurs, according to reports. Areas near Asheville, NC, in the western part of the state, reported several deaths. President Biden is expected to visit storm-torn areas in the region later this week.
Spruce Pine received two feet of flooding, following warnings of flash floods issued for western North Carolina early Friday, according to the National Weather Service. More than 30 flash flood emergencies were issued by the end of the hurricane across five states.
The town is just 5 square miles and has only 2,200 residents, but represents the main global supply of high purity quartz, according to experts and economic development officials.
"Spruce Pine is strategically important because of the high-quality quartz mined there. And yes, it was hit very hard in last week’s storms," Denise Desatnick, vice president of marketing and research at the Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina told Fierce Electronics on Tuesday. A teammate of hers suffered "extensive property damage" in the area, she said, adding that a full prognosis for resumption of production at the mine is still forthcoming.
“It is rare, unheard of almost, for a single site to control the global supply of a crucial material. 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,” wrote Edge Conway in the book “Material World” from 2023. The more perfect the atomic structure of silicon, the more easily electrons can flow.
Sibelco, a global company that mines, processes and sells industrial minerals, mines the HPQ at Spruce Pine and told Conway it is not clear how bad the flooding at its facilities was, or how long it will take to recover, according to the Jalopnik auto review website. The company’s US headquarters are in Charlotte, NC, and Sibelco lists on its website three production facilities in the Spruce Pine area.
The impact on auto industries could be severe, depending on Sibelco’s recovery and how much chipmakers have stocked HPQ. Sibelco could not be reached immediately for further comment.