In London, England, the first commercial canning factory was established by Bryan Donkin and John Hall, who had acquired the rights to Durand's patent. Donkin's factory began producing canned food, initially for the Royal Navy, but soon expanded to supply the burgeoning urban markets. This marked the beginning of the canned food industry, a major milestone in the history of food transport and preservation, demonstrating that the process could be scaled up for industrial production and mass distribution.

The opening of the first canning factory is a key event in the history of the global food system, which is a subject of increasing importance to poets writing in the 20th and 21st centuries. The factory, a site of industrial production, stands in contrast to the pastoral and agricultural settings that had dominated Western poetry for centuries. Poets of the modern era, from the Imagists to the Postmodernists, have grappled with this new industrial landscape, with its factories and its packaged goods, creating a poetry that reflects the realities of a world where food comes from a can, not just from the earth.