By Mary Pieper, Mason City Globe Gazette

CHARLES CITY, Iowa — The Czech tire company CGS is opening a plant in Charles City to help increase its North American market share, according to CEO Jaroslav Cechura.

“We would like to be a global company,” he said Wednesday during his most recent visit to Charles City.

CGS, which was founded in 1932 and is currently the fourth-largest agricultural tire manufacturer in the world, is “getting bigger and bigger,” Cechura said.

Company officials decided the high cost of shipping tires from Europe to America made it necessary to open CGS’s first U.S. manufacturing plant, according to Cechura.

Charles City was a good location because of the John Deere plant in Waterloo and other tractor plants in surrounding states, he said.

In addition, Charles City has an existing building — a former Winnebago Industries plant — that will work perfectly for CGS with some remodeling, according to Cechura.

The plant will produce the Mitas and Continental brands of farm radial tires for the North American market.

Production is scheduled to begin Jan. 1, 2012, with 159 employees

CGS plans to develop the plant in stages, depending on demand, with the third stage bringing the total number of employees to 262.

The average starting wage will be $15.24 an hour.

Eighty percent of the employees will work on the production line.