Hannah Erin Lang of MarketWatch reports that closures from damage caused by Hurricane Helene could lead to supply-chain bottlenecks — and price increases — for the chips used in smartphones, computers, and cars. Lang writes:
A tiny mining town in western North Carolina was among those battered by Hurricane Helene — and the damage could have serious implications for the massive tech-industry supply chain that relies on it.
The mines in Spruce Pine, N.C., about an hour outside of Asheville, produce a unique kind of high-purity quartz used in semiconductor manufacturing. The town is the only place in the world where the uniquely high-quality mineral can be found in such large quantities and produced for such a low price.
The two companies that operate the mines in Spruce Pine said they’ve shut down local facilities as widespread flooding, power and communications outages plague Appalachia in the wake of the storm. […]
“You’re talking about the southern Appalachian mountains, with a lot of unique geological features. Economically, this deposit is one of the most important on earth.”
– Yinan Wang, Geologist
It isn’t uncommon for one of the many ingredients in the semiconductor-manufacturing process to be primarily sourced from just one geographic location, said Peter Hanbury, a partner at Bain & Co. with expertise in semiconductor manufacturing.
But even among such places, Spruce Pine stands out.
“In this case, with 80 to 90 percent [of the global supply] coming from this one location, there’s not a lot of great other backup plans,” Hanbury said. […]
“If we see it takes six to nine months to get production back up, then we think there’s a risk,” he said.
There just aren’t many viable, naturally occurring alternatives to the quartz you can find in Spruce Pine, Hanbury said.
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