An alternative technology to improve oil sands tailings settling behavior, an in-line thickening process (ILTT), was investigated. To achieve these new tailings, flocculants and coagulant are mixed with cyclone overflow tailings in an in-line multi stage fashion. Conceptually by binding fine particles at low solids content into flocs, the hydraulic conductivity is increased, tortuousity is decreased and the mass of the falling flocs is increased. Field and laboratory studies were carried out and preliminary findings indicate that the field in-line thickening process produces tailings that undergo rapid hindered sedimentation from fines void ratios of 67 to 5 followed by consolidation and segregation phenomena at lower void ratios. Shearing during deposition is believed to cause the segregation. History matching of the field pilot pond was performed to determine the geotechnical consolidation properties of the field deposits and these properties were compared to untreated cyclone overflow consolidation properties, which forms new MFT, and to consolidation properties of laboratory remolded ILTT samples. Production of Composite Tailings using ILTT instead of MFT was examined and it is postulated that ILTT CT would be far superior to MFT CT as ILTT's permeability is more than 20 times the permeability of MFT.