John West was a Scot from Linthligow who travelled to Oregon in 1868 to set up a salmont cannery on the Colombia River. He called his company John West Foods.The first fish he dealt with were salted and shipped in barrels via Cape Horn to feed industrial workers in the north of Britain. This all changed when he designed his own automatic filling machine for tin cans, and the whole process was hugely speeded up. Twenty years later the rights to the company name were bought by two Liverpool-based businessmen, Pelling and Stanley as John West moved into gold prospecting in California. They in turn started to import tinned salmon to Britain in 1892. In 1963 Lord Leverhulme, the founder of Unilever, merged Pelling Stanley & Co with two others outfits canning foods and gave the resulting company the name of John West Foods Ltd. It rapidly expanded with an export network of 60 countries. In 1997 Heinz acquired John West Foods Ltd and it was then bought by MW Brands in 2006 (with thanks to Emily Ford).