SPRUCE PINE — Two North Carolina facilities that manufacture the high-purity quartz used for making semiconductors, solar panels and fiber-optic cables have been shut down by Hurricane Helene with no reopening date in sight.
Sibelco and The Quartz Corp both shut down operations in the Appalachian town of Spruce Pine on Thursday ahead of the storm that swept away whole communities in the western part of the state and across the border in East Tennessee. The town is home to mines that produce some of the world’s highest quality quartz.
With increasing global demand, Sibelco announced last year that it would invest $200 million to double capacity at Spruce Pine.
Since the storm, the company has simply been working to confirm that all of its employees are safe and accounted for, according to a statement, as some were “unreachable due to ongoing power outages and communication challenges.”
“Please rest assured that Sibelco is actively collaborating with government agencies and third-party rescue and recovery operations to mitigate the impact of this event and to resume operations as soon as possible,” the company wrote.
The Quartz Corp wrote that restarting operations is a “second order of priority.”
“Our top priority remains the health and safety of our employees and their families,” the company wrote.
Spruce Pine quartz is used around the world to manufacture the equipment needed to make the silicon chips that underpin all our digital devices, Vince Beiser, author of “The World in a Grain,” said in an email.
“To make silicon chips, you need to first melt down a highly-purified material called polysilicon. That can only be done in crucibles that are themselves made of a material so pure it will not react chemically with the polysilicon and is also able to withstand enormous heat,” he said. “The best material for those crucibles is ultra-pure quartz. Spruce Pine is the source of the purest natural quartz ever found on Earth.”
An estimated 70-90% of the crucibles used worldwide are made from Spruce Pine quartz, he said.
City officials in Spruce Pine are focused on locating people who were stranded by the storm, said Wayne Peight, a member of Spruce Pine’s town council, but reopening the mines is important to more than just the companies behind the facilities.
Peight estimated that around three-quarters of the town has a direct connection to the mines, whether that is a job, a job that relies on the mines or a family member who works at the facilities.
“It’s the underpinning of our economy,” he said, and getting the facilities back running “is going to be extremely critical” for the people in Spruce Pine.
“If there is no cash in, especially in a county with as many people on the poverty scale as we have already, we are going to have a really difficult fall and winter if that doesn’t happen quickly,” Peight said.