A broad range of biomass will be needed as a future source of energy. To achieve the European and German targets on the share of biomass in the energy supply, not only wood and straw but also agricultural biomass will have to be deployed in several sectors of renewable energies. The high water content of agricultural biomass results in difficulties in transport and storage, particularly if the biomass is to be processed on industrial scales. Therefore, new processes for pretreatment as well as new markets for moist biomass like grass, silage or by-products from rural conservation have to be developed to increase their avvailability. In this paper a technology is introduced to reduce the water content by means of mechanical pressure. This technical development can be seen as a driver for new markets for high water content biomass. The focus of this article is on a calculation model to evaluate the economic performance of the developed extruder machine. The aspect of pelletisation is not being discussed due to the current state of the R & D efforts.