AP Quartz Industry to Suffer Major Blow as US Imposes Safeguard Duty
Types of quartz used in applications making solar glass, silicon/ferrosilicon, semiconductor-related applications, fused quartz, crucibles
Vijayawada: AP’s quartz industry would suffer a major blow with the US imposing safeguard duty in the range of 25 to 50 per cent on its exports from India from August 15.
AP has a substantial quartz resource base mainly in parts of Nellore, Kadapa, Anantapur and NTR districts and it exports mainly glassy and other types of quartz used in applications making solar glass, silicon/ferrosilicon, semiconductor-related applications, fused quartz, crucibles and others.
As the value of quartz depends upon purity, iron content, size, processing and other issues, the ordinary or industrial quartz’ lumps cost `4,000 to `12,000 per tonne. A-grade quartz lumps cost `12,000 to `36,000 per tonne, gradual quartz costs `9,000 per tonne while its has export potential of nearly US$ 150 per tonne on an average.
An exporter from Nellore quoted nearlyUS $ 150 to 400 per tonne for quartz lumps.
Exporters say that natural quartz lumps/powder and engineered quartz slabs/surfaces are having high potential for exports to the US from AP. India exported 6,002 natural quartz to the US in 2024 against total exports of 1,070 million tonnes worth $172.44 million.
Quartz from AP gets exported to nations like the US, China, Japan, Malaysia, etc through ports like Krishnapatnam, Kakinada, Visakhapatnam and Chennai.
According to exporters, nearly 1.60 lakh tonnes of quartz was exported from Nellore district alone against India’s 9.15 lakh tonnes. This takes Nellore’s share to be nearly 17.47 per cent in total exports from India in 2024-25.
Mining engineer Venkateswara Rao said, “Though AP has a huge export potential of quartz mainly to the US, after the outbreak of US-Iran war, this was severely affected. With the new tariff being imposed, there will be nobody to export to the US and focus on sending raw material to nations like China, Japan, Malaysia and Vietnam.”
Rao who used to have 10 quartz mines in Tiruvuru in NTR district is operating only four mines at present, so as to reduce production.