The fireworks firm that works for Nicki Minaj will light up Wawa Welcome America!

It's the best and most stressful of times for fireworks exhibitor Pyrotechnico, the New Castle, Pa., special effects purveyor that has been delighting viewers with big bang spectacles since 1898.

For the 10-day period leading up to July Fourth, its full-time staff of 85 will swell into the multi-hundreds, as Pyrotechnico stages a staggering 650 fireworks shows coast-to-coast.

Prominent among them are three really big Wawa Welcome America! shows here in Philadelphia - two at Penn's Landing, at 9:30 p.m. July 1 and 2, and then the 10 p.m. finale for the five-hour July Fourth extravaganza on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway.

This holiday onslaught will account for fully 25 percent of the 2,500 fireworks shows that Pyrotechnico stages year-round. Not incidentally, it will also be dazzling Phillies fans on July 2 at Citizens Bank Park, and July Fourth Shore celebrators in Ocean City, Cape May, Sea Isle City, and Barnegat Township.

But that yearly show count doesn't include any jobs its four-year-old Pyrotechnico FX division takes on, upping the stage sizzle for Justin Timberlake, Nicki Minaj, and major EDM festivals.

While not without its issues, the fireworks industry is booming, said American Pyrotechnics Association executive director Julie Heckman, for the first time crossing the billion-dollar sales mark in 2015, with $340 million in shows and $755 million in consumer products. (In 2015, displays of "Class C" ground fireworks - like smoke balls, pop-its, snow showers and sparklers - were noticeable at Target stores.)

While a small-time pro operator might put on a sparse show for $2,500, a big city bash with tens of thousands of complex elements can easily cost "in the six-figures range, not including the ancillary expenses - police, porta-potties, the barges to shoot them off the water," said Heckman. "Research demonstrates that the cost is more than offset by the bump-up in tourism."

So how big is Pyrotechnico?

"After the late 2014, early 2015 West Coast dock strike threatened to ruin our July Fourth shipments" (virtually all fireworks are imported by boat), "we now keep an inventory of three million fireworks," said Rocco Vitale III, the fourth generation co-owner (with brother Stephen) and tech chief of operations.

Pyrotechnico supplements its full-timers with "guys we've trained who just love setting off fireworks," said Vitale. "They're policemen, firemen, accountants and lawyers by day, people who plan their vacations around this. They treat it as a hobby, would probably do it for free, though we pay them well."

The firm has few peers in part because "the regulations are staggering, different from state to state and only getting stricter," noted Heckman. "We're down to less than a dozen major fireworks companies - Pyrotechnico is among the five biggest - as the mounting complexities and costs of doing business have driven smaller companies out of the business." (At its peak, New Castle was home to five fireworks firms. Now it has two.)

Legally buying a semiautomatic weapon "is easier, unfortunately," she said, than getting a license to spark up some crackling chrysanthemums, color-changing crosettes, and Saturn Rings.

In this short-attention-span era, the best fireworks events pack it all into 17 to 20 minutes, said Welcome America! Inc. CEO Jeff Guaracino.

A short show doesn't mean an easy one, though. Longtime Welcome America! musical scorer Todd Marocci spent 31/2 months obsessing over the themed sound tracks for the three Philadelphia fireworks shows, going through 10 revisions for each. The July 1 Penn's Landing show, following a Philadelphia Orchestra community concert there, will be scored with the ensemble's greatest hits. The next night celebrates Philly pop music greats.

Other stuff has changed, too. "Contrary to popular opinions," cardboard shell-encased fireworks are no longer sent skyward on rockets - too easily diverted off course.

The shells are "fired out of mortars - small variations on cannons," said Ken Furtoss, the Pyrotechnico regional show producer in Vineland, N.J.

If the fireworks show you see is slow, it's being run the old-fashioned way by hand - with a pyrotechnician lighting 31/2-second fuses with a long-handle roadside flare. ("Some purists only want to work those kinds of shows," said Furtoss.)

More dazzling shows are electrically ignited from a distance of 100 feet or so - by pressing trigger buttons on a control panel or - for musical synchronization - activating a clock-synched computer program that's smart enough to recognize individual fireworks. Yet even with such inherent smarts, Vitale spends three hours programming each minute of an automated extravaganza.

And he still can't get satisfaction. "My brother Stephen visits several times a year with our fireworks suppliers - most in China, Italy, Spain - to see new colors and patterns and discuss gags [special tricks] we'd like to try." (Look for custom Philly-fied images, said Guaracino.)

Heckman agreed that the luminescent glow of buzzy "bees" has "gotten brighter and faster" in the last few years, likely thanks to new and pricey Italian-sourced compounds.

Finessing the art of skywriting in fireworks "so letters all line up in the same direction is now a high priority, as show sponsors want it to spell out their name," she noted.

"Some guys are experimenting with putting computer chips inside the shells. We'll get there."

takiffj@phillynews.com

215-854-5960@JTakiff