UPDATE 1-Bumi meets output target, focus on cost cuts

LONDON Feb 12 (Reuters) - Bumi Plc, the London-listed Indonesian coal mining group riven by a shareholder dispute, said it met its 2012 production targets and cut quarterly production costs, an area on which it said it would continue to focus.

The company said on Tuesday that it mined 15 percent more coal in the fourth quarter, helping it meet its full-year production target of 21 million tonnes.

Coal sales at PT Berau Coal Energy, in which Bumi owns an 85 percent stake, came in at 6.5 million tonnes in the last three months of the year, up 30 percent on the same period last year.

Realised thermal coal prices dropped 31 percent in the fourth quarter compared to the year-earlier period, which the company said it partially offset by cutting its production cost of sales by 19 percent to $36.1 per tonne.

"We will continue to relentlessly cut costs across the group," Chief Executive Nick von Schirnding said in a statement.

Bumi was co-founded by now feuding parties financier Nat Rothschild and Indonesia's politically connected Bakrie family. Shareholders are due to vote on Feb. 21 on proposals tabled by Rothschild as part of his effort to counter a plan by the Bakries to unwind the group.

Schirnding, who has warned that backing Rothschild's plan would lead to a stalemate and value destruction at the company, said Bumi had found ways to reduce fuel usage and that initiatives to change the long-term cost structure of the business were underway.