HIsarna is a new coal based smelting reduction process, which has the excellent features of using coal and fine hematite ore directly as raw materials instead of coke and pellet. In this context, the reduction kinetics of hematite ore fines in the smelting cyclone was studied in the laboratory scale. The gas-solid and gas-molten particle reduction behaviour were studied with a High-temperature Drop Tube Furnace (HDTF) and a combination of various characterization methods was used to track the kinetic behaviour such as chemical titration, optical microscope and Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM). A series of experiments with different reaction time (210–2020 ms) has been conducted at different temperatures from 1550 K to 1750 K, thus enabling the kinetic study of the partially reduced hematite ore particles. It was found that a quantity of micro pores was formed during the reduction process mainly due to the loss of oxygen. The un-reacted shrinking core model could be used to describe both gas-solid particle reaction and gas-molten particle reaction.