ATTICA Group this week is to ink its first new ferry order with a shipbuilder since the start of the decade.The contracts for two ro-pax ferries from Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering, understood to be worth close to €70m ($96.9m) each, would be signed in Athens on Thursday, the Greek ferry group said. Designed for the Greek island trades, the vessels will have an overall length of 145.5 m and a speed of 26 knots. Each will have capacity to carry 2,400 passengers and 450 private vehicles or 50 freight units and 150 cars. No delivery dates were immediately disclosed but market sources suggest the ships will be ready in 2011 and 2012. For Daewoo, the deal represents repeat business after a gap of nine years. In 2000, having already taken delivery of a first Daewoo-built vessel the same year, Greek ferry operator Strintzis Lines ordered a further two from DSME, which were delivered in 2002 as Blue Star 1 and Blue Star 2. Strintzis was merged with Attica in 2002. Although the group has not done business with shipbuilders since then, last year Attica purchased two ro-pax newbuildings from Italy’s Grimaldi, the first of which has already joined the Superfast Ferries division of the group as Superfast I and is operating on a Patras-Igoumenitsa-Bari route. The sistership is due to be delivered from Italian yard Nuovi Cantieri Apuania and is scheduled to join the same route. Those vessels have a speed of 24 knots and capacity to carry 950 passengers, 170 freight units and 100 cars. It is understood that no final decision regarding deployment has yet been taken but there has been speculation the ships will be used in the Cyclades islands trades in the Aegean. Attica controls 13 ferries, with five of these operating in the Adriatic and the rest in Greek waters.