1972 10 nippon steel has built a № 1 continuous annealing unit in Junjin Plant, and developed the technology of producing cold-rolled deep-drawn carbon steel plates by continuous annealing for the first time, which is referred to as NSC-CAPL for short.

1In July, 1976, a new continuous annealing line №2 for Japanese steel pipes was built in Fushan Plant, which is another continuous annealing technology developed after the production of cold-rolled deep-drawn carbon steel plates by Nippon Steel, and is called NKK-CAL for short. 1In July, 1980, Kawasaki Steel also developed and built a №2 continuous annealing unit, referred to as KM-CAL.

In 1980s, continuous annealing units were built in major steel mills all over the world, and by the end of 1980s, 34 sets of units had been built. Further development in the 1990s, by the end of 1996, about 54 sets of continuous annealing units had been built in the world, with a total processing capacity of over 33 million t/a ... including 26 NSC-CAPL, 5 NKK-CAL13.