Bristol’s oldest fireworks company is not only one of the city’s most successful - but the supplier to hundreds of cities across the UK each year. Skyburst fires from Land’s End to the Shetland Islands and everywhere else in between.
If you live in Bristol, you will have likely been to one of their displays over the years - it has supplied the Downend fireworks for at least 15 years, Camford Park’s Roundtable event and lots of displays at local schools. Skyburst also provided the fireworks display at Bristol Balloon Fiesta for more than three decades, donating tens of thousands of pounds worth of fireworks in the process.
Alan Christie, the co-founder of Skyburst, remembers pulling together the little pocket money he had with the other children to buy fireworks in his home town of Frome. They would host their own community bonfire events for many years before he then settled in Bristol some years later.
Read more: All the Bonfire Night events and firework displays for 2022 in and around Bristol
“I didn’t set out as a kid to start a fireworks company,” he laughed. Alan founded the company back in 1982, where he originally started off as a hobbyist firework company in Bristol. He trained with Devon-based company the Firework Co, which he later bought in 1994, after more and more people asked him to host fireworks displays in the South West.
Alan did not expect 40 years later, he would be running one of the UK’s biggest firework companies, still based in Bristol with the help of his two sons Jay and Luke along with his wife, Deborah, winning awards such as ‘Family Business of the Year’. What is the key to its success?
He said: “The thing that made it for us was the retail through a shop in Bedminster. There weren’t any specialist fireworks shops at the time, there was no such thing. You either got it from the newsagents or from supermarkets much later on."
Skyburst’s retail empire grew over the next couple of years with a shop in Swindon, Bridgwater, Bath and several in Bristol, which they continued for more than a decade. Today they are left with just one site in Bedminster on Nelson Parade, which didn’t matter as the display side of the company took off.
“We did so well, we were so supported by the city of Bristol,” Alan added. After the shops’ successes, Alan and the team wanted to give back to the community by sponsoring a fireworks display for the people of Bristol and approached Bristol City Council and Bristol International Balloon Fiesta.
“My only condition was that the display had to be free for people to get in. We didn’t want people to make money off of it we just wanted them to enjoy the fireworks,” he explained.
Bristol Balloon Fiesta accepted the offer in 1988 and Skyburst became the sponsor of the annual fireworks show for the festival every year up until 2022, when he said the event organisers went with a different fireworks display company.
“The last time we fired there they gave us a £5,000 budget for one display and we gave them two displays for that amount. Over the past 30-plus years, we’ve donated around £150,000 of fireworks back to the city. The crew that worked on those displays did it all for free. We enjoyed doing it for many years.”
Skyburst imports its supply directly from China as part of a buying group, which permits them to employ a regulator to check the quality of the fireworks along with moderating factory safety conditions. This close relationship means they can also be ahead of the curve of new and exciting designs.
“Each year we have a buying group trip to China to see what’s new but we also design fireworks ourselves. We’ve got a wonderful piece of software that we can design a firework from the ground up from just a spark into a large Peony shape bursting in the sky.”
Skyburst's own fireworks focus on creating vibrant colours, which have become so much brighter since the team first started in the 1980s. Alan said that rockets still dominate the market and are most popular as people strayed away from the traditional box of fireworks you might place at the bottom of a garden.
“From a display point of view, we probably have one of the largest ranges of low noise fireworks in the country within the buying group. They have become more and more popular with weddings and noise-restricted venues.”
Alan said the business hadn’t been drastically impacted by the emergence of fireworks in supermarkets aside from box sales dropping off. While supermarkets might offer competitive prices, it’s difficult to compete with the level of knowledge of someone who specialises in fireworks. “The main advantage with us is that we have people working in the shop who actually know what they do through experience,” he added.
Alan said a lot of the big displays are electrically managed now, which makes them safer. His words of advice to people hosting their own displays at home was simply to read the instructions first.
“Fireworks in themselves are safe to use as long as you read the instructions. A lot of the fireworks have some really good information on them.
“The good old firework code is that if you light something and it doesn’t go off, leave it, don’t go towards it. It’s a common sense thing. Over the years, I’ve seen thousands of fireworks malfunction but we have safety distances which mean we’re never stood right next to it.”
Skyburst is located at 11 Nelson Parade, Bedminster, Bristol BS3 4JA
Up next:
