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On October 15th, the new BELARE (Belgian Antarctic Expedition) team gathered in Brussels for an informative meeting at the Belgian Military Hospital. BELARE 2007-2008 will build the new Belgian research station in Antarctica: Princess Elisabeth Antarctica.

In our last report, it was mentioned that all the containers had been recovered from Breid Bay and that the camp site was slowly filling up with equipment. The building team is preparing the Utsteinen Ridge for the station's anchoring points and making progress on constructing the wind turbines.

A first report was received from Alain Hubert and the building team in Antarctica. Twenty-one people are now on site, working away on the wind turbines and getting started on the station's anchoring points.

The moment has finally come for all to say farewell to the Belgian polar station. The Ivan Papanin, a Russian ice class cargo ship, left the port of Antwerp on November 6th, 2 pm.

Wednesday October 24th, the 80 containers carrying the Princess Elisabeth Station were loaded on to the Icelandic Samskip barge at the Port of Brussels. Under a polar wind blowing in from the North, a faithful public watched as the last containers left Brussels.

On request from the IPF, the Norwegian Polar Institute office in Longyearbyen kindly organised a field training course for some of the BELARE 2007-2008 team at the beginning of October 2007.

The dismantling team of Princess Elisabeth Station in Brussels did not waste any time. As of Monday September 10th, around 25 workers were already on site to help bring down the station.

The Princess Elisabeth Station was inaugurated by Prince Philip on September 5th after an international press conference held at Tour & Taxis in Brussels. Belgium's new Antarctic research station was conceived and built by the International Polar Foundation with the help of its financial and technical partners.

Members of the Royal Family inaugurated the "Science & Culture at the Palace" exhibition today, together with Marc Verwilghen, Minister of the Belgian Science Policy. On this occasion, Alain Hubert presented a model of the new Belgian Antarctic Station to the 6 years old Princess Elisabeth, daughter of Prince Philippe and Princess Mathilde, after whom the station was named.

The IPF project team and Prefalux deal with the building modules neeeded to assemble the Princess Elisabeth Antarctic Station. Production has been picking up pace in the last weeks and almost all modules are now ready. Various stages of production are detailed in the picture gallery accompanying this news.