Ron Lancaster was a teenager when he started making fireworks in Huddersfield during the second world war. "As a child they fascinated me, and the fifth of November was a lovely occasion," he says.

These days, Lancaster owns Kimbolton Fireworks, which he believes is the last major fireworks manufacturer in Britain. "Little did I think as a teenager I would be the last one making display fireworks."

Fireworks is one of many manufacturing industries now dominated by Chinese imports, but bonfire night has also been trounced by a more ghoulish apparition: Halloween.

"Halloween is an American import and as far as I'm concerned it's purely a commercial exercise to see how much stuff you can sell," says Lancaster. "It doesn't have any serious connotations at all."

Bonfire night, of course, remembers Guy Fawkes and the gunpowder plot on the Houses of Parliament. But even before then, says Lancaster, who is also a curate, fireworks were lit on the eve of the feast of St John.

The fireworks near me were as loud as ever on Saturday night, and Lancaster reports a "desperately busy" year (firework makers traditionally say the industry is recession-proof; people want cheering up, after all). But Halloween has had a rocket lit underneath it by the major supermarkets.

Halloween is said to be worth £300m in the UK and is now Asda's biggest sales event after Christmas and Easter – "impressive considering Brits didn't really celebrate Halloween 10 years ago", says a spokesperson. Asda's Halloween sales have increased by 22% over the last five years: bestsellers this year include the £7 Gruesome Twosome (hanging skeleton bride and groom) and £15 Pumpkin Mister (a pumpkin that produces smoke). They also sell more than 20 costumes for children.

Unlike Halloween PLC, 5 November is a failing brand: over-reliant on one big bang, it has failed to capture new markets. Its only successful spin-off is the Guy Fawkes protest mask, which is – disastrously for its bottom line – an anti-capitalist statement.

You can sense the supermarkets struggling with the bonfire night sell: Asda predicts jacket potatoes sales will rise by a third and it will sell 46,272 bottles of mulled wine. Tinsel bats are so much more fun, and Halloween's stranglehold on glamour is reinforced by all those shots of Kate Moss heading out to celebrity fancy dress parties.

In contrast, fireworks are banned from sale to under-18s and are viewed as potentially lethal. Even supermarkets seem sheepish about selling them: Sainsbury's reports sales of its Halloween bakery range up 40% on last year, pumpkin sales up 30% on last year and adult fancy dress up 349% week on week – but it doesn't release any sales figures for fireworks.

Laws restrict the display of fireworks on sale in supermarkets and Phil Murray, chairman of the British Fireworks Association, says the industry cannot compete with aisles of Halloween produce. "It's very easy for the events planners and buyers in supermarkets to get behind Halloween, because it's such a huge category in the US and there's a huge amount of products already available," he says. "Firework stands aren't positioned [in supermarkets] to catch the imagination, they are positioned for safety."

Lancaster's fireworks business has enjoyed a bumper year thanks to displays at the jubilee celebrations and at a certain event in east London (which the factory is contractually not yet allowed to boast about). But he is one of many people saddened by Halloween's eclipse of bonfire night.

"I'm 81 now, I've got no axe to grind," says Lancaster. "If children enjoy what's going on, that's fine, but I would feel very upset to think it's getting rid of a British tradition."