On a consolidated basis, the company reported net sales for the first quarter of $426 million and adjusted EBITDA of $54 million.
Collectively, this negatively impacted our adjusted Eva da by approximately $6.5 million are tissue business are lower orders and shipments reflecting overall market trends.
IRI market data showed a nearly 20% decline in overall tissue dollar sales in the first quarter of 2021.
With regards to our balance sheet, we use the free cash flows generated during the first quarter to reduce our net debt by $21 million.
Our people's focus has been key to our success, and we will continue to be so in partnership with local health agencies we have offered on site COVID vaccinations across several of our facilities, and we're continuing to offer a $200 incentive to each employee to become vaccinated.
As you recall, we estimate that approximately two thirds of paperboard demand is derived from products that are more recession resilient, and 1/3 is driven by more economically sensitive or discretionary products.
fastmarkets Risi, a third party industry publication has recognized a $50 per ton increase in folding carton and a $20 per ton increase in food service grades and it's March and April publications.
This resulted in the $6.5 million direct impact to our adjusted EBITDA.
The overall economic impact on this outage store adjusted Eva dust in the second quarter is projected to be between 21 and $24 million as originally expected.
The market for tissue in the US is traditionally two thirds at home and 1/3 away from home with around 10 million tons per year total demand.
This is likely a temporary adjustment after a very robust 12 months of pandemic driven demand.
With that said, we expect long term consumption growth to continue between one to 2% per year.
We sold 11 point 7 million cases in the first quarter, which was down around 23% and 16% compared to the first and fourth quarters of 2020 and down 5% relative to the first quarter of 2019 sales at 12 point 3 million cases.
In the first quarter, our net income was $12 million.
diluted net income per share was 71 cents per share, and adjusted income of 69 cents per share.
Our sales have converted chronics in the first quarter or 11 point 7 million cases representing a unit decline of 23% versus prior year.
Our production of converted product in the quarter was 13 point 5 million cases or down 3% versus the prior year.
we generated approximately 20,000,020 $1 million in free cash flow to reduce our net debt and our liquidity was 282 point 7 million at the end of the first quarter.
The planned major maintenance outage at Lewiston in April, which is included in our paperboard business is complete, and it's expected to impact earnings by 21 to $24 million.
Tissue demand is expected to weaken further from the first quarter shipments of 11 point 7 million cases, as our shipments in April are at 3.1 million cases compared to a monthly average in the first quarter of 2021 a 3.9 million cases to address our elevated inventory levels, and expected lower demand from our customers in the short term.
The amount of quote unquote lack of ordered downtime in the second quarter of 2021 is expected to exceed 1/3 of our peak demonstrated production of 15 point 9 million cases in the second quarter of 2020.
We estimate that the impact would be approximately 9 million to $30 million in the second quarter relative to the first quarter.
And our paperport business plan major maintenance outage is expected reduce earnings for 2021 compared to 2020 by 25 to $30 million.
We've updated this guidance on slide 20, where we broke out the timing by quarter which reflects our current plan and made a negative impact from the weather events in the first quarter of 2021 a 6.5 million.
We're expecting even higher input costs including pulp, packaging, energy and freight versus our previous expectations of 40 to 50 million or revised estimate based on our current assessment of the market to 65 to 75 million of inflation in 2021 versus 2020.
As between 68 and 3536 and $38 million.
We continue to expect depreciation amortization to be between 106 and $110 million.
We have revised our capital expenditure expectations downward from 60 to 65 million to 55 to 16 million.
And our effective tax rate is expected to be 25 to 26%.
And we expect to utilize some of our current tax attributes, which amounts to 16 million to reduce cash taxes.
We did receive approximately 8 million of that 16 million in the first quarter and an additional 3 million in April.
Private brands issue share in the US rose to over 30% from 18% in 2011.
We're building our business to be successful both in the near and long term, and believe that we will come out of point 21 a better operation than where we started.
We're working with our board to develop a medium to long term capital allocation plan and look forward to sharing those thoughts including internal investments, external investments, and the return of capital to shareholders as we approach our 2.5x target leverage ratio.

Summary:
On a consolidated basis, the company reported net sales for the first quarter of $426 million and adjusted EBITDA of $54 million.