MONROVIA, Calif. — CMA L.L.C. has big plans to boost its presence in the North American OTR tire market this year.
Last fall, CMA, the U.S. sales and distribution arm of China's Double Coin Holdings, announced its push into the farm tire market with the distribution of Özka-brand agricultural and off-the-road tires.
CMA also has increased its presence in mining after exiting the mining tire market in North America in the early 2010s during a switch in production to Thailand from China.
Kocaeli, Turkey-based Özka Lastik ve Kauçuk offers a range of radial and bias tractor tires, irrigation tires, radial and bias flotation tires and implement tires.
"We're expecting it to be a great year for us to establish ourselves with a growing market. With still coming off some uncertainty in the last couple of years, we think it will be a good time to get our foothold," Tony Cresta, CMA's director of product management, said.
He said the company is not concerned about too many players in the farm tire aftermarket.
The U.S. market "could be crowded at the top, but where we play, we think there is a lot of room.
"We think that there are a lot of smaller dealers and independents and dealers that may not have been able to get inventory in the last couple of years. They may have been neglected when times were tight with the bigger guys.
"Those are the customers we really want to support. Those are our customers now with our other product lines. It makes sense for us," Cresta said.
He said according to farm tire dealers he's talked with, they had a great year in farm tire replacement sales.
"Those dealers had a good year in 2022 and they are expecting another good year. … A concern for a lot of our tire dealers in this industry is inventory levels of the other (non-ag) products right now. Farm is going to be great this year from where the weathervane points, It's just going to be managing inventory levels.
"That's why we're excited at CMA/Özka/Double Coin with our three warehouses. We've been stocking up on the product and Özka keeps a very large warehouse in Turkey overseas stocked with a lot of product. So our fill rates have been amazing so far."
He said CMA has warehouses in Memphis, Tenn.; Houston; and Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., and they are all stocked with some form of Özka product.
Özka's factory is increasing capacity for new products in the IF/VF segment in sizes for the U.S. market.
CMA is offering bias skid-steer and industrial; radial farm and flotation; bias flotation; implement; irrigation; and radial tractor tires.
Bias tires hold an 80% to 90% share of the irrigation and implement tire market and bias is popular among smaller tractors and front tractor tires and on small farms, he said.
"We do think IF/VF will continue to gain traction with increased weight or lower air pressure for soil compaction. … We're working with Özka to develop some more IF/VF sizes this year because we do see this as a continuing trend."
"We're jumping back in a little bit more full force in the last two years. Especially in the Canadian market we've seen a lot of growth there in the last year," Cresta said.
Double Coin OTR tires have been respected in the market, he said.
"Now that it's back, we're just managing our opportunities as they come. We're being given a chance again, you could say, because the name has been around," he said.
"Toward the end of 2021 we brought in, outside of the 25-inch tires, 25-inch radials, more of the mining sizes that we had been stocking for the past several years. First it started with a couple of containers and then a handful more.
"We talked to customers and now we're at a level where we've been supplying a few customers in the U.S. and a few direct mining customers in Canada as well.
"Out of our warehouses, mostly in the U.S., we've been supplying the mining just to get back into the market. We still have great strong relationships in Canada as well."
CMA offers tires up to 35-inches in rim diameter and is now focusing on the metric sizing for its 29-inch and 25-inch tires, he said.
"It seems to be a growing market for us and we're putting a lot of effort into it."
He said CMA expects to get a foothold in a competitive market.
"There definitely was some supply-chain issues we saw with some of our competitors that allowed us to get an entrance back into some of those accounts we hadn't been able to break through to since we had to depart the market. There was definitely some dips for some people, and some increases for us. So it's been a good year for us," he said.
"We're positioning and trying to be poised to take advantage of those opportunities with a quality product. We're not going out there and trying to sell everybody everything, but we definitely are bringing in some products we know do very well in the markets that we serve," he said.
He noted that above-ground mining is picking up steam in Canada.
"We have recently ((fourth quarter 2022) released the 750/65R25 REM2 tire to the North American market and have seen immediate uptake from some of our mining customers. The 750/65R25 has become increasingly popular on some of the newer articulated dump trucks we are seeing reach the market, and this size is a great addition to our lineup of new metric sizes including the 875/65R29 REM2 and 775/65R29 REM2.
"There's been a shortage in the market and we don't have a shortage."
"The market for us has been strong, especially replacement OTR and construction tires. We expect that trend to continue. It's been a very consistent growth segment for us," Cresta said.
Fill rates on larger REM6 forklift tires were slightly impacted earlier last year, with about a three-month lag on shipments and inventory, he acknowledged, noting that production has increased for the popular 10.00R20 and 12.00R20 forklift tires.
"We, as a company, have done a very good job of balancing our inventory on this product (OTR, construction and industrial tires). We had some peaks and valleys in demand and we sold and produced through those. For us, I think, we're going to be set up for success this year," he said.
Cresta noted that a lot of dealers may be experiencing overstock of some tires, but he expected that to be remedied as tire sales start of pick up at the end of February.
"With just infrastructure spending, a lot of that 25-inch (tires) goes into that type of loader application. It only makes sense for those to be gobbled up. But we do see a trend.
"For us, we're going to put more investment into development of different patterns for the 25-inch (tire) market and beyond. (Low-profile) metric sizing as well seems to be, in the past three, four, five years, it's really taken off for us and everyone else."
Construction tires have been a growth segment for CMA in North America.
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