You can also use either the spring utils, or load properties via the PropertiesFactoryBean.
<util:properties id="myProps" location="classpath:com/foo/myprops.properties"/>
or:
<bean id="myProps" class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.PropertiesFactoryBean">
<property name="location" value="classpath:com/foo/myprops.properties"/>
</bean>
Then you can pick them up in your application with:
@Resource(name = "myProps")
private Properties myProps;
and additionally use these properties in your config:
<context:property-placeholder properties-ref="myProps"/>
This is also in the docs: http://docs.spring.io/spring/docs/current/spring-framework-reference/htmlsingle/#xsd-config-body-schemas-util-properties