Annealing is a part of heat treatment to impart defined material properties. Both the temperature and the temperature curve over time (heating, holding and cooling) play an important role here. Depending on the material, different heat treatments can be applied, some of which require quite long treatment times.

Induction heating offers advantages where fast heating rates, short holding times and a high throughput are required. Examples are soft annealing after wire-or tube-drawing (for all metals), normalisation of steel tubes and rods (diagram) (ELO-TUBE) and recrystallisation in the production of electric strip (ELO-STRIP). In addition to the short line length, induction also has the advantage of low scale formation due to the short treatment time.