Materials Monday - Minspar
, by Cindy Bracker, 1 min reading time
The Minspar mine located in Spurce Pine, NC was deeply affected by the massive destruction from Hurricane Helene. In addition to the important soda feldspar we potters need, AND as the last standing north american feldspar mine, this closure has wide impact even outside of the field of Ceramics. Do be sure to read this Washington Post article about the Quart Company which details the reach and usage of this product in other applications ranging from semi-conductors to solar panels and much more.
If you read our last posting about feldspars, which detailed some lingering issues with the closure of the Custer Feldspar mine roughtly a year ago, the hopeful solutions that minspar offered have just come crashing down. Minspar, as many older-in-the-industry folk will know, was a great substitute for NC-4 or Kona Feldspar. With the mine closure, this product joins the ranks of milwhite talc, custer feldspar, petalite. light magnesium carbonate, green nickel carbonate etc, all of which are currently unavailable. Additional instabilities of important products like #6 Tile Kaolin, EPK and Grolleg are making things difficult to all of us in the ceramic industry.
So what does that mean? Well, first of all, we are limiting sales of minspar much like we did custer. Sorry, no hoarders. We have a decent supply of it right now and we hope that if everyone limits themselves to what they need, that we will have enough time and supply to find suitable alternatives. The clay testing referenced in our last blog post is taking a bit of turn now, and we will be focusing on nepheline Syenite modifications, and we are looking into other ideas to make adjustments for the custer/talc debacles.
We and our sister company, Kansas Clay, remaing committed to providing quality supplies and products to you. We appreciate your patience as we continue to do our best to make needed modifications based on all of the unexpected changes in our industry.