When remelting zinc coated steel scrap dust is collected that contains up to 40 % of zinc and 20 to 65 % of iron. Up to now the most part of this dust has been landfilled but due to economic and ecologic considerations proper treatment for further recycling of this material is desirable. Due to the complex composition of the dusts past process developments in this matter have proven to be of great difficulty. The well known Waelz process is still the dominant technology in dust recycling. Numerous improvements of this technique (pellet forming, crude Waelz oxide washing, SDHL process) have ensured its status as the best available technology (BAT). The present work investigates the possibility of further improvement in output capacity and energy consumption through a reduction of additives in the charging mixture. Five specimen series in a range of basicity between 0.5 and 0.9 were conducted primarily regarding their softening behaviour at process temperature. Beside some surprising findings it could be shown that the chosen path is practicable since the samples with the lowest additive content yielded good results.