To control the uneven drying of a coating film and to efficiently dry the coating film in drying the surface of the coating film formed by applying various liquid compositions to a continuously travelling band-like flexible support body.

The continuously travelling band-like flexible support body 12 is coated with various liquid compositions, and a dryer 18 for condensing and collecting a solvent is disposed at a travelling position just after the coating to dry the coating film. A condensation plate 30, a board-like member, is disposed in the dryer 18 nearly parallel to the band-like flexible support body 12 with a prescribed distance in-between. The distance between the condensation plate 30 and the band-like flexible support body 12, the temperature of the condensation plate 30 and of the coating film are set so that the Rayleigh number expressed by the product of the Grashof number and the Plandtl number is made less than 5000.