President Donald Trump and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick stood before a crowd at a rally in Greenville on Tuesday and announced what they described as a new North Carolina manufacturing plant for semiconductor raw materials, tied to the Belgian mining company Sibelco. There was just one problem: Sibelco itself says it hasn't confirmed any of it.
According to The News & Observer, Lutnick told the crowd Sibelco would build a quartz manufacturing operation requiring hundreds of millions of dollars, calling quartz “the foundation of semiconductors.” Trump said Lutnick had just informed him of the new project. But a Sibelco spokesperson told the paper the company was only aware of public comments about a potential North Carolina project and was awaiting official communication from the U.S. government before confirming any specifics.
A Company Already Mid-Expansion
The confusion stems partly from timing. Sibelco has been expanding its Spruce Pine operations for years, independent of Tuesday's rally remarks. The company committed $200 million in April 2023 to double its high-purity quartz capacity by 2025, according to Sibelco's own announcement, and followed that with plans for a preliminary $500 million Phase 2 expansion running from 2024 through 2027. The company cited long-term sales agreements with solar photovoltaic customers as a driver for Phase 2.
That overlap has left it unclear, per the News & Observer's reporting, whether Lutnick's announcement describes a genuinely new project or is simply political framing of the ongoing expansion Sibelco already disclosed years ago. The Mitchell County Economic Development Commission told the paper it was still awaiting the company's press release with full details, and Governor Josh Stein's office had not responded to a request for comment.
Why Spruce Pine Matters to the World
The stakes of any disruption or delay in Mitchell County ripple far beyond western North Carolina. The Spruce Pine mining district supplies an estimated 70% to 90% of the world's high-purity quartz used to make fused quartz crucibles, which are essential for melting silicon into semiconductor wafers and solar cells, according to reporting cited in the dossier from News4JAX. Sibelco and the Norwegian-French joint venture The Quartz Corp are the only two active producers of semiconductor-grade high-purity quartz in the entire United States, per Farmonaut's review of U.S. Geological Survey reporting.
That rarity traces back roughly 380 million years, when continental tectonic collisions created mineral fluids virtually free of water, yielding unusually pure natural quartz crystals in the region, according to Sibelco's own historical account. Sibelco, headquartered in Antwerp, Belgium, and founded in 1872, entered the Spruce Pine district in the 1970s through its acquisition of Unimin Corporation, and today markets its high-purity quartz globally under the brand name IOTA.
A Supply Chain Still Recovering From Helene
The vulnerability of that global supply chain was laid bare just two years ago. High-purity quartz operations in Spruce Pine completely halted production on September 26, 2024, after Hurricane Helene brought more than two feet of rain to Mitchell County and disrupted operations. A North Carolina maker of high-purity quartz was back operating after Helene, according to News4JAX.
Local officials noted earlier in 2026 that Sibelco ranked as Mitchell County's fourth-largest employer at that point, per the News & Observer's reporting.
Quartz Supply Chain Under Scrutiny
The vulnerability of high-purity quartz supply chains has drawn attention since Helene.
Trump separately claimed at the same Greenville rally that the Department of War is investing $1.5 billion in North Carolina semiconductor chip manufacturing. Lutnick provided few details, and the figure was tied to a previously announced $1.5 billion conditional loan commitment to Wolfspeed, the News & Observer reported. For now, with Sibelco saying only that it will share relevant details through its own communications channels if further information is announced, residents of Spruce Pine and the broader tech industry are left waiting to see whether Tuesday's rally produced new jobs or simply new rhetoric around an investment already in motion.
