U.S. Silica's Ottawa plant is North America's largest silica production facility, mining fine grain, nearly pure quartz sandstone. The reserves are part of the St. Peter Sandstone Formation.
Our surface mines in Ottawa use natural gas and electricity to produce whole grain and ground silica through a variety of mining methods, including hard rock mining, mechanical mining and hydraulic mining. These silica products have a wide variety of applications, including glass production of all kinds, foundry and refractory sand, abrasives, polishes, paint and other fillers, filtration sand, frac sand and cement testing sands.
The Ottawa facility became part of the U.S. Silica family in 1987, and succeeds in continually improving its processes, products and services, making them the leading producer of silica products, with an annual production rate of 2.2 million tons of silica annually. Since acquiring the facility, we renovated and upgraded its production capabilities to enable it to produce multiple products through various processing methods, including washing, hydraulic sizing, grinding, screening and blending.
The facility is located approximately 80 miles southwest of Chicago and is accessible by major highways including U.S. Interstate 80.
