Hurricane Helene devastates quartz mines critical for worldwide semiconductor manufacturing

Sibelco
(Image credit: Sibelco)

Hurricane Helene, which recently hit North Carolina, caused severe flooding and damage across a vast swath. Among the areas affected is the small town of Spruce Pine, which is home to high-purity quartz mines, the only facilities that produce ultra-pure quartz in the world. High-purity quartz is vital for various stages of chip production, so if its supply is disrupted, this could hurt the semiconductor industry, which is already struggling with supply issues. 

There are two companies that mine ultra-pure quartz in Spruce Pine: Sibelco North America and The Quartz Corp. When asked by The Verge, a spokesperson from The Quartz Corp. stated that it was too early to determine whether the company's high-purity quartz production facility has been affected, as its current focus was on the local people and families impacted by the storm. Sibelco has purportedly confirmed a suspension of operations, but our repeated attempts to reach the company were fruitless due to a lack of phone service in the impacted area.

Anton Shilov
Contributing Writer

Anton Shilov is a contributing writer at Tom’s Hardware. Over the past couple of decades, he has covered everything from CPUs and GPUs to supercomputers and from modern process technologies and latest fab tools to high-tech industry trends.

  • GenericUsername109
    Please, double-check before posting such clickbait headlines. The mines are in the hills, not in the town itself (which got hit hard). It is quite possible, that the hurricane actually did not devastate the quartz mines.
    Reply
  • kb7rky
    GenericUsername109 said:
    Please, double-check before posting such clickbait headlines. The mines are in the hills, not in the town itself (which got hit hard). It is quite possible, that the hurricane actually did not devastate the quartz mines.
    Not to mention all the false information about the "lithium mines" being flooded, as well.
    Reply
  • USAFRet
    GenericUsername109 said:
    Please, double-check before posting such clickbait headlines. The mines are in the hills, not in the town itself (which got hit hard). It is quite possible, that the hurricane actually did not devastate the quartz mines.
    Its not necessarily that the mine is devastated, but the roads in and out, and many of the workers are without power at home, etc, etc.
    Reply
  • kanewolf
    GenericUsername109 said:
    Please, double-check before posting such clickbait headlines. The mines are in the hills, not in the town itself (which got hit hard). It is quite possible, that the hurricane actually did not devastate the quartz mines.
    And there is no way to know what happened underground. There could be 50 feet of ground water that has flooded the production areas. We don't know. A mine on a hill is not immune from 2 ft of rainfall because some of that water does make it underground.
    Reply