A wind energy company has collapsed into administration four years after moving to Kent and promising to create more than 100 jobs.

X-Wind Power, which had carried out research into new turbine designs, failed to reach its ambitious targets, making all its seven staff redundant as it tried to find a buyer.

The firm had been trying to find new investment after entering insolvency proceedings known as a company voluntary arrangement in 2015.

After an unsuccessful search for funding, administrators Quantuma were appointed on September 8 and are now trying to sell the intellectual property of the business to satisfy its creditors.

The firm was founded in 2010 with the aim of eventually manufacturing medium-scale vertical axis wind turbines.

In 2013 it announced it was relocating its operations from the Isle of Wight to Discovery Park business estate in Sandwich.

At the time, the Danish state-owned energy company DONG Energy described X-Wind as a “potentially game changing technology”.

The firm, which has its registered address in Herne Bay, promised to create 16 jobs that year and another 90 jobs within five years.

In 2014, it revealed it had secured a £1 million interest-free loan from Kent County Council’s Expansion East Kent fund, a pot of cash designed to help up-and-coming businesses with big job-creating ambitions.

However, it failed to reach its employment targets despite high growth forecasts for the renewable energy market.

Quantuma partner Simon Bonney said: “The company was in the early stages of its life cycle, involved in research and development, and therefore had not got to the stage of manufacture and sales.”