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I'm impressed by the replies!
I mean, I would expect made-to-order panniers with customisation options (a huge range of colours, different options for the chequering, logos and wording to customer specification) to be expensive, but just not £900 expensive.
I'm certain that they're brilliant quality, unbelievably rugged panniers, and they are pretty much the biggest panniers I've seen. (which is why I was looking for information about them in the first place).
I just can't work out though, why spending £1250 on a full set of these is cost-effective.
oxpoleon
A couple of things there pointing to the higher cost.
Start with the Ortleib Back Roller Classic which retails at around £80 for a pair.
These are larger so there is more material cost.
These are sling over panniers so there's a set of construction needs there to make sure that they maintain their form and have the sort of longevity for frequent use on those areas subject to loading strains.
These appear to have panelled bases.
The colour is fairly unique, I've not seen that outside of emergency service use when it's not on clothing or vehicles. I do know the fabric is comparable to Ortleibs so it's probably a special order.
The same also applies to the retroreflective stripping.
Unlike the Ortliebs, these are a multipanel design which will carry high construction costs.
That additional pouch attaching to the seatpost is also unique.
Looking at it, I suspect that whole top panel flips up and is a velcro down which means it will need a heavy service fastening.
The big kicker that really bumps up the price is the economies of scale. I would suspect that there aren't more than 2000 of these in service across the country. The manufacturers probably churn out no more than 30-40 a year if that. £80 for a pair of Ortleibs is possible because they knock out thousands, ship in bulk and and operate on a scale that makes warranty support of limited impact.
To the untrained eye, I would suspect that a cost of around £600 might turn a reasonable profit though.
If you apply some of the economies of scale to the bikes, I suspect that the price is a little on the low side. I'm guessing that the prices you quote come from a package breakdown of costs. It maybe that the quoted costs of the panniers is where the company has shoehorned the profit.
Yes, all of this will be supplied by a single supplier. That's fairly standard practice for the public sector for something like this. It takes a cost burden off of the sector to no have to source multiple items with a variety of lead times and having to issue unified specifications to multiple suppliers. A single supplier can adopt these costs with less impact because they'll be doing the same sort of work for multiple local authority areas. I would imagine that local authorities are offering 3-5 year supply tenders and should be considering conducting specification reviews at the end of each cycle (not a pun).
What did the costs source say about the per supplied unit cost after delivery? Are there any scheduled service or maintenance work commitments included in that? Call out options? RTB Warranty coverage etc?