The station is part of the research base of Ny-Ålesund, owned and managed by Kings Bay AS.

The AWIPEV station is leased and operated by the French Polar Institute (IPEV) and its German counterpart, the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (AWI).

The AWIPEV station is founded in 2003 by IPEV and AWI.

At the time, IPEV was managing the French Arctic stations of Rabot and Corbel, AWI was managing the German station Koldewey.

In order to increase French-German cooperation in the Arctic, making bi-national projects and sharing the logistics, both polar institutes decided to merge their resources and create the first German-French bi-national polar station.