A former McVitie’s marketing director has launched a digestive biscuit made to a ‘traditional’ recipe.

Tuckey’s Proper Digestives, which roll out to 146 Sainsbury’s stores nationwide next week (rsp: £1.39/240g), were made with ingredients used in the traditional digestive recipe, such as butter, Demerara sugar and molasses, said Tuckey’s co-founder Simon Tuckey.

They are being launched as a rival to mainstream digestive biscuit brands which, over the past 15 years, had “taken out the good stuff,” he claimed.

“Other brands have lost the heritage of how they make the digestive biscuit and no longer follow the original recipes because of price promises and government guidelines,” said Tuckey, who worked at UBUK for nearly three decades, including a three-year stint as marketing director for McVitie’s and as MD of UB Asia.

He predicted Tuckey’s would clock up £10m in first-year sales by targeting consumers who believed taste to be “paramount” when choosing food.

“True choice for the consumer comes in depth not just breadth - another new cookie or breakfast biscuit,” he said. Two further “traditional-recipe” biscuits were in development and set to hit shelves this year as part of the start-up’s strategy to become “the name for everyday food made properly.”

“There are many brand leaders in packaged food that are very different from how they started out, and we plan to restore them,” added Tuckey.

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