![Old Engine House [Click to enlarge image]](http://www.swanseamuseum.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Old-Engine-House.png "Old Engine House [Click to enlarge image]")
Swansea copper smelters faced increased foreign competition, and some of the leading smelters in the region diversified into other non-ferrous metals. In the ferrous sector, rapid growth in demand for tinplate particularly in the USA – facilitated a local boom; the imposition of the McKinley Tariff in 1891 caused a significant fall in production, but tinplate continued to be a significant local economic activity into the first half of the 20th century, with demand buoyant during the two world wars.
The Hafod and Morfa works combined in 1924, but by then copper smelting had already ceased in Swansea. The industry rapidly declined in the last quarter of the nineteenth century as a result of smelting works being established nearer to the mines which formerly supplied Swansea with its ores. It was more economic to smelt the ore where it was mined. The last owners, Yorkshire Imperial metals, continued rolling copper plates for steam locomotive boilers and undertook other specialist work, but in 1980 the works finally closed. Copperopolis was no more… the end…
