More than four metric tons of food procured by Elgin-based St. Charles Trading will feed the 1,000 or so people working at McMurdo Station on Ross Island in the Antarctic for more than a year, a company official says. Food for two of the three U.S. research bases located in the frozen tundra of Antarctica is procured by Elgin-based St. Charles Trading Inc., which obtains enough to feed more than 1,000 for a year, according to Vanessa Baker, the company’s marketing director.
St. Charles Trading has been working with Kaiyuh on the Antarctica project since 2020. All told, the effort involves ordering and transporting four metric tons of food, Baker said. For example, they can’t get fresh milk delivered so St. Charles Trading sends a year’s supply of powdered milk via Kaiyuh Services, Baker said.
Packing takes from mid-September until Thanksgiving. Goods are put into specialized food containers that are transported to Port Hueneme in California, where they are loaded onto a resupply vessel en route to New Zealand, Eisenstatt said in the release.