Floods in North Carolina threaten mines crucial to the global electronics industry

The flood in North Carolina threatened the operations of mines producing the world’s purest quartz sand – an irreplaceable ingredient for the production of components that are the heart of smartphones and other electronic devices.

The town of Spruce Pine, where these unique mines are located, remains in terrible condition, with power, water and cell service largely disconnected on Tuesday. Although floodwaters from Hurricane Helene have subsided, local residents say many roads remain impassable. Some people were still desperately trying to make sure their loved ones were safe.

The disaster has devastated this small town of about 2,200 people on the North Toe River, but it is also expected to affect people around the world. High-purity quartz from the Spruce Pine mine is key to the production of semiconductors – the brains inside computing devices – as well as solar panels, fiber-optic cables and other industrial products.

“I don’t think the nation really realizes how critical this little town is,” said Michael Vance, a local developer who is informally coordinating some relief efforts for Spruce Pine.

Both major mine operators at Spruce Pine, Sibelco and Quartz Corp. said they suspended operations on Thursday, the day before the center of the storm passed over western North Carolina, and did not yet know when work would resume. Companies said their immediate goal is to keep employees safe and contact people who are still unreachable.

“Many people in the area, including our employees and their families, are facing displacement and significant disruption,” Belgian company Sibelco said. “We have confirmed that most staff are safe and are making every effort to contact those who are still unreachable due to ongoing power outages and communication issues.”

Neither Sibelco nor Quartz Corp. They did not confirm Monday whether their plants were damaged or what long-term impact it might have on their production. Quartz Corp. said it had “no information” when operations would resume and that some of its employees had joined local task forces to help restore essential services to the area.

“We are at the stage of assessing the situation and it is definitely too early to comment on the impact on the production of high-purity quartz,” said May Kristin Haugen, head of communications at Quartz Corp., which is jointly owned by French and Norwegian companies. “Our priority now is that the people and families affected by this terrible storm.”

Dan Hutcheson, a veteran semiconductor industry analyst, said that while mines will likely recover over time, consumers can expect higher electronics prices in the coming months. Producers could temporarily switch to other sources of quartz, but this would involve additional refining costs.

Vance said Spruce Pine was still under a state of emergency on Monday. Residents were told it would take at least three weeks to restore power supply and more than a month to restore water supply.

“They desperately need food and water,” he said. “They are still trying to find people. We just don’t know where some people are.

On Monday, some mine workers were reported missing. One post on the Facebook group said two groups of Sibelco workers set out from Red Hill, near Spruce Pine, on Friday to clear the roadway of trees and debris. The post said that while most of the 26 workers were confirmed to be safe, some remained unaccounted for.

In recent years, Washington has focused on the resilience of the semiconductor supply chain amid rising geopolitical tensions with China. In addition to powering consumer devices, chips also act as the brains of smart missiles and every other advanced military weapon.

U.S. officials have warned that Taiwan is a bottleneck in the semiconductor supply chain and have pushed for chip production to be moved to the United States to avoid over-reliance on East Asia for key components.

But the floods in North Carolina show that national disasters can also disrupt industries critical to national security.

Hutcheson, the semiconductor analyst, said the chip supply chain was generally able to absorb the shock from natural disasters such as the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan without major shortages. Manufacturers have some inventory in warehouses they can draw on, he said, although disruptions could lead to higher prices.

“It usually works, and if you look at it year after year, you don’t see the impact,” he said of previous major natural disasters affecting the supply chain.

The 2008 Spruce Pine fire temporarily disrupted the global supply of quartz.

According to Sibelco, the Spruce Pine quartz deposits were formed about 380 million years ago when the land masses that now constitute Africa and North America collided. The lack of water at the impact site resulted in the unusual purity of the quartz in the area.

Minerals from spruce pine were used in electronics already in the times of Thomas Edison. More recently, high-purity quartz has been used to produce crucibles, which are containers used to melt silicon to produce silicon wafers for semiconductors.

Spruce Pine resident Sharon McIntosh drove to Tennessee on Monday to buy water and other supplies and find a cell signal to contact loved ones. She said while the impact on the mines remained unclear, other, more visible infrastructure such as streets and railway lines had been destroyed.

“The train won’t run there for many months,” she said. “The downtown business district is destroyed. I don’t think he’ll recover from this.”