Bromesko was phased out in the early 80s but Record Rapid lasted nearly until the 2000s
Agfa removed Cadmium from their warm tone papers in the late 1980s. I began using Record Rapid around 1987 and was disappointed when they reformulated with no Cadmium, it no longer had the same range of image tones/colour, extremes of warmth, but it was still an excellent paper. It was discontinued and replaced by Agfa MCC in about early 1994.
After that the only major paper still incorporating Cadmium (here in the UK) was Kodak Ektalure, but this was old stock made long before the ban.
There's been a lot of mention about "Portriga" as well as "Portriga Rapid". Are those the same thing, or are these different variants.
To the best of my knowledge, Record Rapid lasted until the early 2000s, Portriga Rapid was discontinued in the 1990s and nominally replaced by MCC 118 (which in terms of the aesthetic of non-toned end product was rather like stating an apple had become an orange).
Portriga and Record were a different faster-than-Lupex contact speed emulsion that did have Cd in it. They were long gone by the 1970s from what I can tell from available catalogues, but had a history lasting back to before WW2 - the original formula was called 'Portriga' but versions on pure white bases seemed to have been called 'Record' in the post WW2 era. The idea seems to have been to give some continuity with the faster 'Rapid' enlarging papers.
Portriga Rapid and Record Rapid directly evolved from Brovira Braun which doesn't seem to have had Cd in it, but did use a small amount of Pb salts. The main variation was in base colour and the blending of some grades to give somewhat intermediate ones in Portriga Rapid (e.g. PRK). From what Agfa were prepared to give away in the patent record, other than a move to chemical sensitisation and away from active gelatins, until the necessity of introducing washed emulsions in the 1970s for RC, the emulsions were much as disclosed in FIAT/ BIOS (and in some aspects, their competition were still playing catch up even then, especially in terms of maximum contrast - soon after, newer emulsion making methods with tighter control of crystal growth resolved that). From that point there's at least two changes: the advent of washed emulsions for RC, resulting in Portriga Speed and Brovira Speed as additions (and consequent effects on the behaviour of the FB emulsions); and a further change as noted by Ian in the 1980s (which I suspect may have been a move to a different coating plant and a reformulation to newer making techniques with tighter crystal growth control rather than Cd being eliminated - and probably changes in hardener, preservatives etc to reflect then current legislation, which did not seemingly affect the scale of use of Pb in the emulsion at that point).
Alongside that, we can run what we know of Kodak's habits in the use of Cd - they were seemingly busy eliminating it from the early 1970s, and it is reasonable to surmise that while some papers (Kodabromide) that used it (you can see a 'typical' bromide enlarging paper formula in the SPSE handbook) were reformulated (not to the satisfaction of many end users), others that were perceived as not having sufficient market size/ worth were allowed to EOL somewhere around the early 1980s (Medalist, and I suspect, Kodak Ltd's Bromide, Bromesko and Royal Bromesko). The killer for Ektalure (and Record Rapid) may well have been RoHS legislation targeting Pb, and a shrinking market for the papers from the digital shift meant that the corporate decision was made to allow them to EOL at the turn of the century, rather than reformulate. Cd's big strength seems to have been in terms of desirable curve shape alteration, with rather milder effects on warmth of image tone.
