Balchem Corporation 401(k): Empower, match 6% max
Balchem Corporation 401(k) Plan · BCPC · CIK 9326
Empower is the recordkeeper named on the Form 5500 filed for this plan, the company that keeps the account records. Where to log in, and what the filing says.
Maximum employer match, as a share of pay
6%
Balchem Corporation matches 100% (dollar-for-dollar) of the first 6% of pay.
From the Form 11-K filed June 18, 2026 ↗, covering the plan year ended December 31, 2025. Page data last updated July 28, 2026, when the Form 5500 bulk data was last refreshed. Why filings lag
On this page: what the employer actually paid in · the formula, word for word · when the money becomes yours · who can join · who holds your account · what the plan reports to the DOL · how it compares · what to do next
What Balchem puts in, and what the plan costs
What Balchem put into the plan, per active participant
$4,678
Balchem Corporation put $4,678 into this plan for each of its 1,021 active participants in plan year 2024. This is the whole employer side of the plan: matching money, profit sharing, non-elective and safe-harbor contributions, and reallocated forfeitures. The Form 5500 does not separate them, so this is what the employer put in and not the match.
Balchem put in less per active participant than 57% of plans with 1,000–4,999 participants in pharmaceuticals and chemicals. The middle plan in that group of 156 reported $5,739. Pharmaceuticals and chemicals comes from business code 325300, which Balchem entered on its own Form 5500. Sponsors pick that code themselves, so a code that does not describe what the employer does ranks the plan against the wrong companies.
What this figure cannot separate: how much Balchem pays, and how much it puts in
This is dollars, not a rate. A Form 5500 carries no payroll, so the figure reflects both how much the employer puts in and how much the employer pays: two plans running the same formula report different amounts when one pays better. Crossing the peer group with industry holds most of that difference still, and none of it disappears.
This is one plan year, not an average. A true-up, a plan merger or a one-off contribution moves a single year on its own.
Source: DOL Form 5500 for the plan year ended December 31, 2024, EIN 132578432, plan 005 · DOL EFAST2 ↗
The $4,678 above is the Form 5500 figure for plan year 2024, and it counts every employer dollar on one line. Balchem Corporation also files a Form 11-K, which states the match formula for plan year 2025: the card below reads $2,970 a year at a $49,500 salary, and the same filing states employer contributions made outside the match. That second figure is what the formula pays one worker on that salary, and not an amount either filing reports. The two figures cover different plan years and measure different things, so neither one is the other one corrected.
What Balchem puts in
$2,970
a year, at a $49,500 salary.
The match paragraph, word for word
“To maintain “safe harbor” status, the employer will make a safe harbor matching contribution equal to 100% of the elective deferrals that do not exceed 6% of compensation.”
What you contribute to collect all of it
Contribute at least 6% of your pay to collect the full match.
That is $2,970 a year at a $49,500 salary, and it scales with your own.
Vesting score
100 out of 100
How fast the employer’s money becomes yours. Higher than 48% of the 369 schedules we have scored.
It measures vesting speed and nothing else. It says nothing about the size of the match, what the plan charges, or the funds inside it.
Share of the employer's money that is the worker's at hire and at each of the first 6 anniversaries: 100%, 100%, 100%, 100%, 100%, 100%, 100%. The score is the average of those 7 readings.
Vesting, word for word
“Participants are 100% vested in their contributions (including rollovers) and employer safe harbor contributions, plus actual earnings or losses thereon.”
The plan tops the match up after year end, so contributing unevenly through the year does not cost the worker part of it.
The same match paragraph, word for word
“To maintain “safe harbor” status, the employer will make a safe harbor matching contribution equal to 100% of the elective deferrals that do not exceed 6% of compensation.”
The wait before the match starts and the year-end true-up appear above when the filing states them. Neither is part of the score, and a filing that is silent on one of them is not a plan without it.
What the plan costs, against plans of its size
73rd percentile
$124.45 per participant in plan-paid administrative cost, more expensive than 73% of plans with 1,000–4,999 participants.
What is Balchem's 401(k) match formula?
Balchem's 401(k) employer match tops out at 6% of pay. The plan pays an annual true-up. What an annual true-up repays is the arithmetic behind that line: it matters most in a year when contributions land unevenly.
| Match formula | 100% (dollar-for-dollar) of the first 6% of pay |
|---|---|
| Maximum employer match | 6% of compensation |
| True-upA year-end recalculation that repays match lost to uneven contributions. | Yes, annual true-up |
| Paid in company stock | Yes |
| Other employer contribution | Non-elective employer profit sharing contribution portion, subject to a separate vesting schedule; no non-elective profit sharing contribution was made for the year ended December 31, 2025 |
At a $75,000 salary, contributing 6% ($4,500) earns the full employer match of $4,500 for the year.
What the filing says, word for word
“To maintain “safe harbor” status, the employer will make a safe harbor matching contribution equal to 100% of the elective deferrals that do not exceed 6% of compensation.”
Source: Form 11-K filed June 18, 2026, SEC EDGAR, corroborated by the filing's inline-XBRL facts · SEC ↗
What is Balchem's 401(k) vesting schedule?
Balchem vests the employer match immediately: 100% is yours as soon as it is paid in. Nothing is forfeited when you leave, which is not true of the two schedules that vest over time.
| Employer match vesting | Immediate: employer match is 100% vested when contributed |
|---|---|
| Your own contributions | Immediate: always 100% yours |
| Accelerated vesting | Participants become fully vested in the event of death and disability, as defined by the Plan. |
| Other employer contributions | Vesting in the non-elective employer profit sharing contribution portion of accounts is based on years of continuous service: less than one year 0%, one year but less than two years 20%, two years but less than three years 40%, over three years 100%. |
Vesting, word for word
“Participants are 100% vested in their contributions (including rollovers) and employer safe harbor contributions, plus actual earnings or losses thereon.”
Source: Form 11-K filed June 18, 2026, SEC EDGAR · SEC ↗
Who can join Balchem's 401(k), and is enrollment automatic?
Balchem enrolls new hires automatically; the filing does not state the default deferral rate.
| Plan entry | The 401(k) and Safe Harbor Matching portion of the Plan covers all active U.S. employees of Balchem Corporation (the “Company”, or "Employer") who have completed two months of service, as defined, and are 18 years of age or older, except those who are currently covered by a collective bargaining agreement. |
|---|---|
| Excluded groups | except those who are currently covered by a collective bargaining agreement |
| Automatic enrollment | Yes: |
Eligibility, word for word
“The 401(k) and Safe Harbor Matching portion of the Plan covers all active U.S. employees of Balchem Corporation (the “Company”, or "Employer") who have completed two months of service, as defined, and are 18 years of age or older, except those who are currently covered by a collective bargaining agreement.”
Automatic enrollment, word for word
“Employees are automatically enrolled in the Plan on the first day of the month after they become eligible to participate and can elect to opt-out at any time.”
Source: Form 11-K filed June 18, 2026, SEC EDGAR · SEC ↗
Who holds your account
Schedule C of the Form 5500 filed for plan year 2024 reports Empower, filed as “EMPOWER ANNUITY INSURANCE COMPANY”. That is the company paid to keep the account records: what is in an account, what went into it, and usually the site a participant signs in to. The trustee that holds the plan’s assets can be a different company, and this filing does not name it.
7,876 plans on file name Empower as their recordkeeper. Of those, the 7,813 with a computable fee have a median plan-paid cost of $165.72 per participant.
Participants log in at Empower ↗. 401(k) Monitor is not affiliated with Empower or with any other recordkeeper, and takes nothing for this link. It is here because that is where the account is.
| Recordkeeper | Empower |
|---|---|
| Recordkeeper EIN | 061050034 |
| Recordkeeper address | 8515 East Orchard Road, Greenwood Village, CO 80111 |
What does the Balchem plan report on Form 5500?
The Balchem plan reported $141.8M in assets and 1,438 participants for plan year 2024.
| Total plan assets | $141,773,680 |
|---|---|
| Participants | 1,438 |
| Plan-paid admin cost per participant | $124.45 |
How that cost compares
This plan pays $124.45 per participant. The median across plans in pharmaceuticals and chemicals is $128.47, from the 870 of 942 whose Form 5500 yields a per-participant cost.
Read from the Form 5500 filing of Balchem Corporation 401(k) Plan, which has no page of its own here.
How does Balchem's 401(k) match compare?
Balchem Corporation's maximum 401(k) match of 6% of pay compares with a median of 4% across the 269 companies in our data with a computable formula.
Employers worth reading next
Of the six employers below, three file in pharmaceuticals and chemicals, two report the same recordkeeper and one vests on the same schedule.
Maximum match 6% of pay. Also in pharmaceuticals and chemicals.
Maximum match 6% of pay. Also in pharmaceuticals and chemicals.
Maximum match 5% of pay. Also in pharmaceuticals and chemicals.
Maximum match 6% of pay. Same recordkeeper, Empower.
Maximum match 5% of pay. Same recordkeeper, Empower.
Maximum match 1.75% of pay. Vests immediately too, like Balchem.
What can you do next?
- Read the Form 11-K on SEC EDGAR ↗
Form 11-K filed June 18, 2026, SEC EDGAR. Every match fact on this page comes from it.
- Changed jobs? Find an old 401(k) ↗
The Department of Labor's Retirement Savings Lost & Found, a free government database.
- This year's IRS contribution limits ↗
The official deferral and catch-up limits every formula operates under.
Questions this filing answers
What is Balchem Corporation's 401(k) match?
Balchem Corporation matches 100% of employee contributions up to 6% of eligible pay (plan year ended December 31, 2025).
When does the Balchem Corporation 401(k) match vest?
Immediate: employer match is 100% vested when contributed.
Does Balchem Corporation's 401(k) plan have automatic enrollment?
Yes: .
Who is the recordkeeper for Balchem Corporation's 401(k)?
Empower is named as the recordkeeper on the Form 5500 filed for Balchem Corporation 401(k) Plan for plan year 2024. That is the company paid to keep the account records: what is in an account, what went into it, and usually the site a participant signs in to.
Source
The match formula, the vesting schedule and the enrollment rules on this page were read from one document: the Form 11-K annual report that Balchem Corporation filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission for the plan year ended December 31, 2025. Each of those fields carries the filing sentence it was read from, expandable where the field appears. Nothing on this page was supplied by the employer to this site.
The plan assets, the participant counts, the plan-paid fees and the recordkeeper come from a different document, the plan’s DOL Form 5500 annual return, and the section that reports them links it. Comparisons with other employers are computed across the filings named in the section they appear in.
Read the filing on SEC EDGAR ↗
| Document | Form 11-K annual report |
|---|---|
| Filed with | US Securities and Exchange Commission (EDGAR) |
| Filed by | Balchem Corporation |
| SEC CIK | 9326 |
| Accession number | 0000009326-26-000022 |
| Plan | Balchem Corporation 401(k) Plan |
| Period of report | December 31, 2025 |
| Filed | June 18, 2026 |
401(k) Monitor is not affiliated with Balchem Corporation, with the Securities and Exchange Commission or with this plan’s recordkeeper, and publishes this page without their involvement. It republishes a public filing and says where it came from.
Cite this page
401(k) Monitor, “Balchem Corporation 401(k) plan facts”, from SEC Form 11-K accession 0000009326-26-000022, plan year ended December 31, 2025.
