Sydney NYE Fireworks 2014/15

Australia is the first place to televise the welcoming of the New Year fireworks around the Globe and year on year it gets more spectacular.

The event is paid for by the local Sydney Government and it brings in a staggering a 156 million Australian Dollars to the local economy.

The fireworks show for New Year in Australia’s heartland are split into two sections, the first of which is a family event which takes place at around 9:00pm to enable the parents to show the children a beautiful fireworks display before hopefully settling so that the adults can enjoy their celebrations.

The pyrotechnics are the brainchild of Foti Fireworks who are one of a handful of ‘first families of fireworks’ of Italian heritage established in 1793. In 1952, Celestino Foti emigrated to Australia, having been a prisoner of war there in WWII and started off with Vulcan Fireworks before eventually taking ownership of the company with his son Sam in 1969 and he never looked back, staying in the pyrotechnics field right up until he sadly passed away following complications after he received an injury in 2001.

His family continues with the family tradition and I would have thought that by this stage, seven generations later, the pyrotechnics are in their genes!

Sam Foti, Master Pyro-technician, trained in Japan with the best of the best in their field and he actually holds the record for the biggest shell ever made and launched in Australia. It was a massive 24 inch “Silver Kamuro with Multi-shell Pistil” which weighed an incredible 80kg and took 6-weeks to make.

Of course, the first time that Foti did the fireworks was back in 1964 (50 years later and still putting on the best show in the World!!) and they continue with the tradition to this day and go from strength to strength.

The firework stats are impressive:

$156 million to the Australian economy
1 BILLION watch the midnight fireworks Worldwide
The technicians use an incredible 60 km of wiring (that is 196,850 feet of cable!!)
45 firing crew members
100,000 individual pyrotechnics
25,000 shooting comets
11,000 shells

This year’s theme is ‘Inspire’ as the country embraces their multi cultural ethnic mix as they welcome in 2015 as a whole nation.

We will of course be bringing you footage of the event as it unfolds some 11 hours ahead of the start of our celebrations.

All the best for 2015 to our compatriots in the industry who will of course be working hard until the wee small hours to ensure that everyone across the world will have a New Year to remember.