Around October 1st. Hurricane Helene surprised everyone by making landfall as expected and then shifting the eye to the East Tennesse area. As expected, it dropped a month’s rain plus in many places across the Southeast of the US causing flooding, trees down, loss of cell service and a host of other concerns. Some of them could be fixed within a few days, in East Tennesse areas the water that flows downhill increased in size by 20 feet causing the rivers to widen and take whatever was in their way. In most areas of the country, the roads follow the rivers, and when rivers become large the roads are no match for the river and roads need to be replaced. While the first concern for any disaster is the people, after they have a sense of stability, there are other concerns.

In an article from the Associated Press, 2 North Carolina facilities that manufacture the high-purity quartz used for making semi-conductors, solar panels and fiber-optic cables have been shut down and there is no reopening in sight.

Sibelco and Quartz Corp both have operations in Spruce Pine. The town is located in North Carolina across from the border of East Tennesse. The town is located northeast of Asheville and used I 26 for transportation.

Outside of Spruce Pine are some of the world’s highest quality quartz. Last year, Sibelco announced it was investing $200 million to double capacity at Spruce Pine. Both Sibelco and Quartz said they were concerned with the people first and operations a distant second.

Vince Beiser, author of the World in a Grain, described the process as to make silicon chips, you need to first melt down a highly purified material called polysilicon. That can only be done in crucibles that are themselves made of a material it will not react chemically with the polysilicon and is able to withstand enormous heat. The best material for those crucibles is ultrapure quartz. Spruce Pine is the source of the purest natural quartz ever found on Earth.

An estimated 70-90% of the crucibles used worldwide are made from Spruce Pine quartz.

Wayne Peight who is a member of Spruce Pine’s town council said around 75% of the people in the Spruce Pine has a direct connection to the mine.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, every downside has the opportunity to learn something and it is possible to take a position in the companies when they are out of favor. In the above case, the companies have a market share of 70-90%, with that number you can do research about who owns the company and what happened to the price. How resilient is the company, after the unexpected events. When should operations start again to retain their market share? Answering a few questions, can lead to new investments.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.