Regarding processValidatorFactoryBean(@Observes ProcessBean<ValidatorFactory> event)... There is an inconsistency in the spec. Type parameters in ProcessProducerMethod (and ProcessProducerField) got swapped in CDI 1.0, so that it's not possible to observe the return type of a producer method, but only the type of the declaring bean. JCP compatibility rules require to keep the wrong ordering. On the other hand the spec text got fixed. TCK and RI (Weld) follow the API. Hopefully this will be fixed in CDI 2.0