Hurricane Helene floods mines in Spruce Pine, which are responsible for 90% of the world’s ultra-pure quartz.

Hurricane Helene has flooded the US mining town of Spruce Pine, that is responsible for 90% of the world’s ultra-pure quartz, a key mineral used in the production of semiconductors. 

Sibelco, the Belgium mining conglomerate that operates the quartz facility in Spruce Pine, has said that it was “too early to assess” how long it would take to resume production.  

Spruce Pine, a 2,000-population mountain town in North Carolina, is in the words of one company, “the only mine on earth with quartz pure enough to produce the crucibles needed to manufacture semiconductor ingots”. 

Single-crystal silicon is made from high-purity polycrystalline silicon or polysilicon. It is grown by filling a high purity quartz crucible with silicon, helping to ensure the purity of molten silicon when manufacturing single-crystal silicon.  

This is because the quartz must be 99% pure to avoid it reacting in the intense heat with even purer “polysilicon” from which computer chips are made, when they are heated and melted in an extracting machine. 

This process produces silicon ingots that are then sliced into thin wafers upon which the transistors and circuits are imprinted to make chips.  

It is this crucial foundation that is responsible for producing the semiconductors that power all the electronic devices from computers to smartphones, which we rely on in our day to day lives.  

$2 billion of Quartz is shipped around the world annually according to analysis by Russell’s ALPS Marine. 

Some analysts have said that 99% of all the global GDP is dependent one way or another on semiconductors. 

There is a wider concern that the disruption of the facility could spell a period of disruption to the $600 billion semiconductor industry. 

However, making computer chips is a slow process taking weeks or months to turn the lumps of polysilicon into a perfect silicon wafer, and a further period to turn the piece into a silicon chip. 

It is because of this lengthy process, that many silicon wafer manufacturers such as Global Wafers, Siltronic and Sumco have between three to eight months of inventories to chipmakers according to analysis by Semi analysis, a chip consultancy as reported in the FT. 

However, until the extent of the disruption is known, there will be many watching and waiting to see how the next few months unravel. This is without mentioning the prospect of further storms, with over 6 weeks left of the official hurricane season and water temperatures in the Gulf much above average, as evidenced by the rapidly strengthening, now ‘major’ hurricane Milton.