Note 9.

Benefit Plans

The Company and its subsidiaries have pension plans covering the majority of eligible employees on a contributory or non-contributory basis. The Company also provides postretirement health care and life insurance benefits for the majority of its U.S. retired employees. Disclosures for the U.S. plans have been combined with those outside of the U.S. as the international plans do not have significantly different assumptions, and together represent less than 25% of our total benefit obligation.

In May 2014, as a part of its acquisition of AMCOL businesses, the Company assumed AMCOL’s qualified defined benefit pension plan and supplementary pension plan (SERP). The defined benefit pension plan covered substantially all of AMCOL’s domestic employees hired before January 1, 2004. The SERP plan provides benefit in excess of qualified plan limitation for certain employees. For more information on the AMCOL acquisition, see Note 2 to the Condensed Consolidated Financial Statements.

Components of Net Periodic Benefit Cost

	Pension Benefits
	Three Months Ended
	Mar. 29, 2015			Mar. 30, 2014
	(millions of dollars)
Service cost	$	2.6		$	2.0
Interest cost		3.9			3.1
Expected return on plan assets		(5.1	)		(4.3	)
Amortization:
Prior service cost		0.3			0.3
Recognized net actuarial loss		2.8			1.7
Net periodic benefit cost	$	4.5		$	2.8

	Other Benefits
	Three Months Ended
	Mar. 29, 2015			Mar. 30, 2014
		(millions of dollars)
Service cost	$	0.1		$	0.1
Interest cost		0.1			0.1
Amortization:
Prior service cost		(0.8	)		(0.8	)
Recognized net actuarial (gain)/loss		-			-
Net periodic benefit cost	$	(0.6	)	$	(0.6	)

Amortization amounts of prior service costs and recognized net actuarial losses are recorded, net of tax, as increases to accumulated other comprehensive income.

Employer Contributions

The Company expects to contribute approximately $10.0 million to its pension plans and $1.0 million to its other postretirement benefit plans in 2015. As of March 29, 2015, $1.0 million has been contributed to the pension plans and approximately $0.2 million has been contributed to the other postretirement benefit plans.