The European company behind Scotland’s Lockerbie Data Centres – which had designs for what it said could have been one of the largest and most efficient data centers in the world – has gone into administration.

The financial affairs of local construction firm R&D are now being handled by administrator Ernst &Young.

In a phonecall today, R&D administration staff said letters were expected to be delivered to interested parties detailing the firm’s financial problems this week.

R&D figures show that the company made an operating loss of £109,000 in 2008, on top of debts amounting to £30m, most of which was bank overdraft.

Lockerbie Data Centres had received approval from the Dumfries and Galloway Council in Scotland for its data center concept for the Peelhouses Data Center and Sustainable Village. The data center was to be the base of a sustainable community, with new business encouraged to come on site to service the data center and surrounding technology park workforce.

Plans for the data center itself cover 250,000 sq m of floor space, with an additional 20,000 sq m set aside for a technology and business park and additional space for 750 homes for the wider marketplace.

The development plans, which show the use of an existing brownfield site, also cover a new “village center” and a renewable energy strategy, which would have seen heat from the data center transferred for wider village use.

Renewable energy was going to be used for the data center, including biomass and windfarms – the farm sits close to the Steven’s Croft Biomass Power Station.