As a workaround, can you wrap the bean that is returned by the BeanInitializer   @Config  class into some kind of wrapper? For instance, this appears to work: @Configuration public class BeanInitializer { @Bean public HelloWorld helloWorld() { ... InitialContext context = new InitialContext(); final HelloWorld helloWorld = HelloWorld. class. cast (context.lookup( "java:app/hello-ejb/HelloWorldBean!com.example.HelloWorld" )); return new HelloWorld() { public String sayHello() { return helloWorld.sayHello(); } }; ... } } The point is that the object returned by the producer method, which is going to be turned by Spring into a Spring managed bean, should not be the EJB proxy itself.