As Bonfire Night approaches, the team at Dynamic Fireworks are preparing for the busiest business period of their year.Ross Bentley went behind the scenes to meet managing director Nigel Claydon.

An air of studious concentration permeates the Colchester offices of Dynamic Fireworks the day I visit.This is an important time of year for managing director Nigel Claydon and his staff, who will organise and deliver up to 70 firework displays across Essex and Suffolk in the 10 days around November 5.

“Up to 60% of the company’s annual business takes place within a three week period around the start of November,” says Nigel. “We get through tens of thousands of fireworks putting on public displays for councils, clubs and businesses.”

As well as organising displays, the company sells fireworks to the public from its store in Stanway, Colchester and the well-known Firework Emporium shop in Foxhall Road, Ipswich, which the company bought in 2008. In addition, the firm has a thriving mail order business and, because of Nigel’s contacts in China, the company also imports products to sell to other firework retailers across the UK.

Unsurprisingly, I learn that China dominates the global firework industry and is responsible for producing around 90% of the world’s fireworks. For the last 15 years, Nigel has made an annual pilgrimage to the Chinese city of Liuyang where over 1000 firework manufacturers are located within a 200-mile radius. Even for a man like Nigel, who has a self-confessed passion for pyrotechnics, the number of fireworks he sees on these purchasing missions can become too much of a good thing.

He continues: “Our Chinese partners show us some of the new effects they have been working on and we will make suggestions about how we’d like them altered – maybe a longer burst or more blue colour, for example . Then, they’ll go back, make the changes and we’ll see the results the next night.“We might see 100 different fireworks every night. This is happening everywhere because of all the companies located in the area - there are fireworks going off all over the place.”

The task of giving names to these new creations is left to Nigel who spends most of the return flight back from the Orient coming up with suitable titles for the explosive entertainers he has had made to order. Monikers such as Vortex Volley, Baptism of Fire and Trojan Myth are all from Nigel’s own pen.

Nigel and his dad, Bob, have a 50-50 share in the company and both got involved in the fireworks business as a result of them owning a chain of newsagents where previously they used to sell a small amount of fireworks as Bonfire Night approached.

“We realised there was an opportunity and set up a company importing and selling fireworks, which we would supply to our own newsagents as well as the owners of other newsagents that we knew,” Nigel explains. “At the time we were called Anglia Fireworks but in 1996 we changed our name to Dynamic Fireworks as we started to expand and do work outside the region.”

Today, Dynamic Fireworks is one of the biggest fireworks companies in the UK and has carried out displays for the likes of USAF Lakenheath for its July 4 celebrations and Waveney District Council’s Millennium celebrations. Corporate clients include BMW, Royal Bank of Scotland, BBC and Shell.

“There are a few firework companies who are bigger than us - mainly the companies who sell fireworks to the supermarkets - but I would say we are in the top third of the premier division,” adds Nigel, who is extremely proud to have grown the company whilst ensuring it has stayed a family business. His daughter, Charlotte, cousin, Lee and sister, Denise are involved on a day-to-day basis while at busy times such as November 5 he can call on up to 40 trained staff, many of whom are family members.

With so much of the business concentrated in such a narrow time window, planning and organisation is key. While the general public will be focussed on the approaching festivities this year, the company is already taking bookings for November 5 2015, to speak nothing of the 15 or so weddings and parties they attend each month, and the 40 or 50 displays they will be responsible for during July and August.

Nigel says he likes to have all the fireworks he requires for the year ahead delivered from China by summertime, which means at certain points of the year the company is responsible for storing an extremely high quantity of rockets, barrages and Catherine Wheels. Health and safety is a major issue for the company and Nigel’s involvement with some of the national fireworks industry bodies, such as the British Pyrotechnists Association, ensures not only that he keeps abreast of the latest legislation but also that he takes part in lobbying on behalf of the sector. He also puts this expertise to commercial use and holds training courses for organisations and clubs on how to organise a firework display and some of the critical health and safety considerations involved.

Another factor that has had a knock-on effect on the business’s bottom line is the changing social and economic conditions in China. Nigel says: “China has woken up to the way the West works in recent years. It used to be the case that you could buy a product cheaply because there were a lot of manufacturers bidding for your business. Now, there are fewer manufacturers who are charging more. The price of raw materials has also increased, while wages for labourers are going up and rightly so.

“A second generation of workers in China are reluctant to go and work in factories - they want to work in air-conditioned offices, so companies have to pay people more to make fireworks. This has meant our margins have been squeezed, but it’s part and parcel of what we do and we still get a buzz from our work.”

Despite difficult trading conditions in recent times, Nigel has still been able to spot new opportunities. A growing area for the firm is a trend towards families placing the ashes of a loved one into a firework in order to give them a send off to remember. The company has set up a separate business called Heavenly Stars Fireworks and developed a range of fireworks where people’s ashes can be fired to the heavens in style. “I was asked to do this for a client six years ago and things took off from there,” adds Nigel. “We are now the preferred supplier for a number of funeral directors. It’s not for everyone but some people see it as a special tribute and a fitting way to celebrate a life.”