Updated Friday with statement from Sibelco and updated stats
Following at least 215 deaths and billions in damage from Hurricane Helene throughout six states in the southeast US, hopeful signs emerged more than a week after the storm first struck land in Florida.
Both the Quartz Corp mines and Sibelco mines in North Carolina remained closed as of Friday, while Sibelco reported only minor damage from an initial assessment even as power remained out.
The Quartz Corp., one of two quartz mining companies in hard-hit Spruce Pine, reported its workers have been located and are safe. Both companies mine and produce high purity quartz, vital in the manufacture of silicon for integrated circuits. Quartz said earlier in the week that it expects to avoid any supply disruption due to the hurricane, while Sibelco said Friday its final product stock was not hit by the storm and it was working with customers to assess their needs. "We...plan to the restart of product shipments as soon as we can," the company said in a statement on Friday.
Both are critical to the local economy because many of the small town's workers are employed at either plant or with suppliers, town officials said.
A spokeswoman for Quartz told Fierce Electronics Wednesday that conditions had improved enough to conduct the first visual inspections to its plants hit by flooding and wind from the storm. “It would appear that the damage is mostly concentrated around ancillary units,” she said in a statement. “It is still too early to assess when TQC will resume operations and this will depend on the rebuilding of local infrastructure. However, we remain confident in our ability to avoid any supply disruption for our high purity quartz customers.”
At least 215 people were killed across the region, according to officials on Friday, eight days after the storm first hit Florida, while some searches for the missing continued in remote areas.
More than 1 million customers in the Carolinas and Georgia were still without power on Thursday, including 435,000 in western North Carolina, which includes hard-hit Asheville and nearby Spruce Pine, according to Duke Energy.
North Carolina highway officials reported earlier in the week that up to 400 roadways were damaged and unpassable, which includes areas that could potentially affect the quartz mining operations. Quartz had said its resumption of operations will depend on rebuilding of infrastructure. In Spruce Pine and nearby, roads, bridges, water, sewer, electricity and communications were all damaged in the storm by winds and floods.
At Sibelco, power was still out on Friday. "Restoring power remains crucial to resuming our operations," the company said, adding power line repairs to the plant had "progressed significantly."
Some semiconductor analysts earlier said a shortage of high purity quartz could lead to integrated circuit production delays, but it was too early to tell how serious the storm damage was to Spruce Pine. Companies that rely on quartz have some options, including pockets of stockpiles in a vast supply chain, they added.
Quartz said it operates a “long supply chain,” partly as it added greater focus on resilience planning after Covid hit. “As a result, we have established strong levels of feed stock in Norway to supply our purification operations,” the spokeswoman added. “Coupled with safety stocks of finished products and those that exist at different levels throughout the supply chain, we do not anticipate any critical situation for our downstream industries in the short or medium term.”
Sibelco did not assess long term supply chain except to say it has a "long-standing commitment to sustainability which includes measures to mitigate the impact of extreme weather events such as Hurricane Helene...Our operations have shown resilience."
While Quartz saw limited impact on the supply chain, its operation was still closed, along with Sibelco's mining operation, with both impacting the jobs of many people in town through direct employment or suppliers, noted town officials.
"It’s the underpinning of our economy," said Wayne Peight, a member of the town council speaking to Fox. Getting the facilities back running "is going to be extremely critical" for the people in Spruce Pine.