Give the broker bean an id, and pass it as a ref to the inner class that is used to systemExit the broker if systemExitOnShutdown was in effect on the broker element. If the keepAlive thread gets to shutdown the broker, it will invoke that runtime hook and exit with whatever value is configured as the systemExitOnShutdownExitCode. <broker xmlns= "http: //activemq.apache.org/schema/core" id= "broker" brokerName= "${broker-name}" ... systemExitOnShutdownExitCode= "5" > <!-- system exit on broker stop without systemExitOnShutdown= " true " --> <shutdownHooks> <bean xmlns= "http: //www.springframework.org/schema/beans" class= "org.apache.activemq.broker.BrokerService$4" > <constructor-arg ref= "broker" /> </bean> </shutdownHooks> ...