On Monday, 4 May, just before quarter to five in the afternoon local time, a workshop at the Huasheng Fireworks plant in Liuyang exploded. The blast levelled the building, shattered windows in homes a kilometre away, and killed 37 people. Another 51 are in hospital, five of them in a serious condition. One person is still missing. (Casualty figures per China Daily and BBC News, updated 9 May 2026.)
Before we get into the supply side of things, we want to start where the story actually starts. Forty-odd families are now living with the worst kind of news. A 1,500-strong rescue team spent thirty hours on a site where unexploded black powder warehouses were still a live risk. Two of the women in the workshop next door to the rocket line told a CCTV reporter they'd been getting ready to clock off when they saw the smoke. They ran. Two of their colleagues didn't make it out.
Our thoughts are with them, with the people still in hospital, and with the rescue and emergency teams who walked into a site that was still smouldering.
What we know about the cause
Investigators are still working through it. What's emerged so far is that Huasheng has been pulled up by inspectors more than 20 times over the last 4 years. In January, the company was fined 15,000 yuan after staff in a weighing room were caught mixing oxidisers and reducing agents in the same space, the exact combination that makes a workshop go up. Eight people connected to the company have been detained while the State Council investigation team does its work.
By Liuyang standards, Huasheng was a medium-sized, established business with a long track record. Around 60% of its output went overseas. That's part of what makes this so unsettling for the wider industry. It wasn't a back-street operation.
A point that's come up in the UK trade discussion this week, from people who've spent time inside Chinese factories: the workshops that went up appear to have been the labelling and finished-product warehouses, classified 1.3G, rather than the 1.1G powderline workshops where loose powder gets handled. The powderline buildings are tiny, earth-walled and limited to one person at a time, precisely so a mass explosion can't happen there. The 1.3G workshops are bigger because, in theory, finished and semi-finished products shouldn't behave like a mass explosive. If the investigation concludes that mass-explosion behaviour occurred in a 1.3G-rated space, the structural and storage rules across the entire industry could be rewritten. That would be a bigger deal for global supply than this one factory closure.
The province-wide shutdown
Within hours of the explosion, Hunan's Emergency Management Department ordered every fireworks manufacturer in the province to stop work. That's 431 factories across Liuyang, Liling and the surrounding counties. The neighbouring province of Jiangxi, the other major Chinese fireworks region, followed shortly after.
For context, Liuyang alone produces roughly 70% of the fireworks that leave China for export markets. Hunan's annual output was over 50 billion yuan (around £5.5 billion) in 2025. So when the province goes quiet, the whole global supply chain notices.
"Consumptive production" – what it actually is
A few days into the shutdown, the Hunan Provincial Safety Production Committee issued an implementation plan for what they're calling "consumptive production during the emergency suspension period". A useful infographic summary has been doing the rounds in importer circles this week. Here's the short version, because there's been some confusion about what it does and doesn't allow.
When production was halted on 4 May, somewhere in the region of 5,000 tonnes of pyrotechnic composition and semi-finished product were already sitting on factory floors and in transfer stores across Hunan, with about 4,189 tonnes of that in Liuyang alone and another 800 tonnes in Liling. With summer temperatures already pushing past 30°C in workshops, leaving that volume of mixed composition in place is itself a serious risk. Pyrotechnic compositions become less stable at high temperatures. Metallic dust and effect items can react in hot, humid conditions. Spontaneous ignition risk rises.
The "consumptive" scheme allows a small number of approved factories, under heavy supervision, to finish off material that was already mixed, pressed, or partially assembled before the shutdown. They can complete existing items. They cannot mix new composition. They cannot increase stock levels. They cannot start anything new. Approval runs for a maximum of seven days at a time and includes daily inventory reconciliation, on-site government supervision, 24-hour CCTV monitoring, and exit checks. The framing in the official document is explicit: this is not a return to normal manufacturing. It's a controlled wind-down of a high-risk pile of material.
So what does this actually mean for UK supply this year?
A few practical points, in order of how much they matter to a UK customer.
First, most of what we'll be selling for the 2026 Bonfire season is already either in the UK, on the water, or finished in a Chinese warehouse, ready to load. May, June, and the first half of July are the peak production months for our season because of China's mandatory summer production ban, which usually kicks in around early July. Factories build for autumn export through spring and early summer, and the bulk of that work for the UK is done. UK trade voices we trust have flagged that this suspension could realistically run right up to the scheduled summer shutdown, effectively turning a six-week halt into a longer one for anything that hadn't started production by 4 May. That's the line to watch.
Second, the things most likely to be affected are brand-new 2026 product lines that were still being mixed or pressed when the shutdown hit. Some of those simply won't be reformulated, finished, and shipped in time because container shipping from China to the UK is currently at around 75 days door-to-door. Anything not ready to leave port by roughly the end of August is unlikely to make Bonfire Night in any meaningful way.
Third, the wider picture isn't only Liuyang. Container rates have been ticking up, Middle East routing is still adding cost and time, and the post-explosion safety overhaul will almost certainly mean tighter inspection regimes and slower restarts even once the suspension lifts. That's going to weigh on costs across the industry for the rest of the year.
What it doesn't mean, despite some of the chatter floating around online: it doesn't mean there are no fireworks for Bonfire Night. There will be. The shelves won't be bare. Established ranges that have been in production for months are largely sorted. We've been in regular contact with our importers since the news broke, and the picture we're getting is steady rather than panicked.
What we'd suggest, if you're planning ahead
If you usually leave it until the last week of October to sort the family display, this is probably the year to bring that forward a bit. Not because we're trying to drum up early orders, but because some of the new-for-2026 ranges may turn up in tighter quantities, and the popular cakes always go first in the run-up to the 5th. If there's a specific item on your shortlist, getting it in the basket sooner rather than later is sensible.
If you're running a public display or a club event, talk to your supplier early about your headline pieces. There's no need to substitute the whole shopping list, but the show-stoppers are where you want certainty.
And if you're in the trade reading this: the industry forum threads, the importer emails and the translated Chinese government notices are all telling roughly the same story. Don't panic. Plan early. Keep an eye on the second half of June for the next set of official updates from Hunan.
We'll post another update if the picture changes meaningfully. In the meantime, our condolences again to everyone affected in Guandu and Liuyang. The people who make this stuff for us take risks for it every working day, and that's worth remembering when the sky lights up in November.
Update — 27 May 2026
A UK importer is just back from a week in Liuyang, and the picture they bring lines up with what we sketched on 14 May, with a bit more colour to it.
The city is quieter than they've ever seen it. Subdued mood, real concern about what comes next. By the end of the week they were starting to pick up a cautious optimism around the factories that look well-placed to restart.
The consumptive production scheme is now live in practice. Factories with semi-finished goods on the floor are being allowed to complete them under supervision, working to windows of three to seven days depending on the local rules. Once those items are done, the doors close again.
The thinking on the next phase is that the more modern factories, and those whose licences were most recently renewed, may restart in June. No firm date yet.
Around 300,000 people work directly in Liuyang's fireworks factories, with a comparable number across the supply chain around them. The local government knows the city can't sit idle for long, but doesn't want to rush a restart and risk another incident.
Jiangxi is still operating, with government officials reportedly visiting factories daily, and some production that hadn't started in Liuyang has shifted across the border. There's a catch though. Jiangxi's own summer shutdown comes earlier than Hunan's, and several factories there were already running close to capacity. So the overflow is real but capped.
For the UK side, this is roughly what we said on 14 May. The phased restart means any new-for-2026 ranges that hadn't been mixed by 4 May are increasingly unlikely to make Bonfire in commercial quantities. Established lines and anything already in finishing are still on track. A June restart for modern factories, if it does come, helps the back end of the season for established products. But it's probably too late for genuinely new SKUs given a 75-day shipping window.
We'll review again at the end of June, when the next round of official Hunan updates is expected.
Image credits
All photographs in this article are Creative Commons licensed and credited to their original photographers. Aftermath of the Liuyang fireworks plant explosion (hero image) by China News Service, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0). Liuyang fireworks workshop interior by Haluk Comertel, via Panoramio / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0). UK Bonfire Night display in Dornoch, Scotland by Andrew Tryon, via geograph.org.uk (CC BY-SA 2.0). Infographics by Galactic Fireworks, drawing on figures published by the Hunan Provincial Safety Production Committee.
Sources
This article draws on reporting from English and Chinese news outlets and on official documents published by Chinese provincial authorities. Primary sources cited:
- Xinhua: "Hunan orders full fireworks production suspension after fatal explosion", 6 May 2026. Official wire confirming the province-wide halt across all 431 Hunan fireworks manufacturers.
- China Daily: "Search and rescue ops in Liuyang nearly over as death toll rises to 37", by Li Muyun and He Chun in Changsha, 9 May 2026. Updated casualty and rescue figures.
- BBC News: "Explosion at China fireworks factory kills 26 people", by Koh Ewe and Laura Bicker, 5 May 2026. Initial English-language coverage with eyewitness accounts.
- South China Morning Post: "Was China's fireworks capital rushing its July 4 orders when deadly blast hit?". Industry-context analysis on production scheduling pressure for overseas export orders.
- The Paper / CCTV: "新闻调查丨浏阳烟花厂爆炸事故后续处置有何重点、难点？", 10 May 2026 (Chinese). On-site CCTV investigation, including details of Huasheng's prior safety inspection history.
- Fengsheng / Ifeng op-ed: "浏阳烟花厂爆炸致37死，为何'一关了之'是下策？" by Jia Yongmin, 13 May 2026 (Chinese). Economic and regulatory analysis of Liuyang's fireworks industry, including the cyclical safety-incident pattern.
- Hunan Provincial Safety Production Committee implementation plan for consumptive production during the emergency suspension period. Official figures on pre-existing stock levels (4,189 tonnes in Liuyang, 800 tonnes in Liling) and the seven-day approval window with on-site supervision.
- UK fireworks trade discussion via the Fireworks Forum (UKFR) thread on the Liuyang factory explosion, 5-13 May 2026. Cited for industry-side observations on workshop classification, supplier communications, and shipping timing.
Published 14 May 2026 by James Turver, Galactic Fireworks. We'll update this page if the picture changes materially. Last reviewed: 27 May 2026.
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