2008 MASC Annual Meeting & Golf Tournament a Success!
With over a 100 attendees and 88 golfers, the 2008 Annual Meeting & Golf Tournament was the largest ever! This year's meeting and golf tournament was held at Timberlake Plantation Golf Club in Chapin S.C. MASC would like to thank all sponsors and congratulate all golf tournament winners!
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Made in the Midlands
***The following article about U.S. Silica was featured in a cover story in the State Newspaper Business Section titled "Made in the Midlands":
Crushed sand is probably a commodity few think about, but increasingly, South Carolina sand mined by U.S. Silica on Edmund Highway is turning up in scores of products people come in contact with every day.
The silica, as the industrial sand is known, mined in West Columbia is cleansed and run through a series of screens and divided and grouped by size.
“It’s a very precise process, separating the granules by size, because every market has its specific requirements and needs,” said Jim Holmes, plant manager of the West Columbia facility for the past two decades.
For instance, larger, coarser silica is used in grout, sands and epoxies, and even makes up the warning tracks of many major league baseball teams. In recent years, petroleum companies have used U.S. Silica’s coarser grains in old wells to force oil deposits to the surface.
The finer grains are used in fiberglass applications by Owens Corning as well as in electronic circuit boards and large blades used at power-generating wind farms.
“Our silica runs the gamut, being used for everything from the very traditional to the cutting-edge efforts to create alternative sources of energy,” Holmes said. “It’s also used in beer bottles, which in some respects seems like the most recession-proof product of all.”
The facility mines about 400,000 tons of silica per year.
Among its the longest-term users are PPG Industries in Lexington, a manufacturer of synthetic fabrics; Owens Corning, a glass-fiber mat maker in Aiken; and AGY, which makes materials for the aerospace, marine, defense and electronics industries in Aiken.
“I always tell people that we’re at the bottom of the food chain of just about every product they come in contact with,” Holmes said. “In fact, I once asked a fourth-grade class what their classroom would be like if there were no mines.
“One student really got it. He said, ‘We’d be standing here naked in the middle of the woods.’ And you know what, he was right.”