The largest Spruce Pine mine is owned by Sibelco ... From above, they look like giant white sandy beaches. The area is set back from the local North Toe River, which flooded.

The world’s main producer of high-purity quartz, a mineral crucial to the global supply of semiconductor chips, announced its shuttered Spruce Pine ... as we can,” the mine owner, Sibelco ...

An aerial look at the quartz mines in Spruce Pine, North Carolina ... activities to restart operations as soon as we can,” the mine owner, Sibelco, wrote in an update Friday.

Sibelco, the Belgian company whose Spruce Pine mine is the county’s largest employer, said in a post on its website that it had “confirmed the safety of most employees and are working ...

“Our dedicated teams are on-site, conducting cleanup and repair activities to restart operations as soon as we can,” the mine ... sells its white quartz sand under the brand name IOTA, which the ...

Now cooled and worn, the rocks around Spruce Pine has the look of a dirty snowball thanks to a combination of feldspar, mica, and quartz. When ground up, it just looks like white sand, but when ...