The iron and steel industry generates about 8 million tons of electric arc furnace dust (EAFD) per year. The current standard process for treating this material stream is the Waelz process, which is not optimal in terms of the recovery rate for zinc. Therefore, alternative process concepts have been developed in recent years in which carbothermal reduction does not run over solid carbon but with carbon dissolved in a liquid metal bath. In the literature, a catalytic effect is attributed to this approach. However, quantification in terms of a kinetic evaluation has not been carried out to date. In the present study, the catalytic effect of the metal bath on the reduction of zinc oxide is investigated based on different experimental studies. It was found that carbon-saturated nickel (Ni) increases the kinetics by a factor of up to 10, and carbon-saturated iron (Fe) increases the kinetics by up to 30, with the catalytic effect increasing with a higher ZnO concentration. In the case of iron, the carbothermic reduction is additionally overlapped by a metallothermic reaction and thus further accelerated.